


Mountain Keep

by Geffbob



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Necromancy, Swearing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29464905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geffbob/pseuds/Geffbob
Summary: Two adventurers try to complete all their assignments at once, but one of their assignments goes wrong. Featuring Mileasia - Elven female of royalty and elegance and Gerdam - Dwarven female of abrasiveness
Kudos: 1





	1. Intro

_ With hair of gold, with hair of coal _

_ With grace and elegance, with strength and poise _

_ With fire in her eyes, with death in her hands _

_ Two souls bound, two souls, until the end. _

“What’cha writing there love?” - said Gerdam, curious and confused. Coming back with wood slumped over her shoulder. She set it down with a large bang and began picking off leaves.

“A poem” - replied Mileasia. Looking out into the distance. The hilltop they were currently resting on was warm with the evening sunlight. Both the horses were fine to just eat grass as they rested. 

Gerdam’s heavy armour was resting on a rock next to them. Dwarven armour typically consists of leather, dwarven metal (sturdier than regular metal and blue, dwarves will refuse to share the way dwarven leather is made to non-dwarves, unless you’re a very trusted close friend) and belts. While lightweight, it can be uncomfortable and cause a lot of chaffing after a while, and both magical beings wanted to rest. 

While relaxing, Gerdam likes to wear typical dwarven clothes; soft white long sleeved cotton shirts with buttons, black pants, held up with a belt (knife permanently in the belt, obviously) and plain leather shoes. Her hair is long, brown and has several braids. Like most dwarven women, she has a long brown bushy beard which she considers to be her pride and joy, regularly commenting on “slicing the hand of whichever whoreson that dares to touch it”. Her armour, however, is a bit bulkier. A dwarven metal helm that has a retractable faceplate, a dwarven metal breastplate with leather armguards (dyed blue) with a slot on the back for a sword (seldom used) and a chainmail skirt which, strangely, never makes any clinking sounds. Her armour would have fur with it, yet she had it removed a few weeks ago because of the heat. A belt holds up the skirt and attaches it to the armour, which in turn allows Gerdam to hold an unreasonable amount of objects. Knives, pouches with herbs, bombs, bandages, more knives and obviously, alcohol.

Mileasia is worlds different from Gerdam, as she is wearing nothing but a white cloak with a hood that shimmers in the sunlight. Clearly magical, as it is always clean, and any substance slides off it, particularly useful for close range encounters. It is very difficult to see any of Mileasia’s features, yet, her ears do poke into her hood and her face can be seen. One of her ears is pierced with a blue stone, which matches her eyes. Blue, serious eyes that always seem to be looking at something contrasts heavily with Gerdam who has lovely green eyes and a constant smile on her face. There is obviously a parting in the middle of the cloak which exposes Mileasia’s body, and the jet-black skin-tight leather armour underneath. No weapons are seen, yet she always seems to have one ready. However, unless she’s about to kill something, Mileasia doesn’t open her cloak, only occasionally removing her hood when she’s indoors, to be polite.

It was a beautiful end to a beautiful day. Mileasia and Gerdam had been working all of yesterday and the day before. As they were both proud members of the Adventurer’s Guild, Gerdam had the wonderful idea to accept 6 missions around the Catherm area. Catherm was a decently sized town, close to the grand ocean. Dwarven territory by law, but with many human residents in the area a lot of dwarves call the region “The Pinklands”. Mileasia knows better than to argue with Gerdam’s “incredible judgement” and “perfect decision making”, so they had to complete all of these missions with very little rest over the next 2 days before they expire. 

The first mission was simple goblin clearing, as simple as going to a cavern and ridding it of the pests. Gerdam’s signature “hit the wank-a” technique worked flawlessly, and by 10am Monday morning, the cavern was clear and all that was left was a bunch of goblin corpses with flattened heads. 

The second mission was a lot more difficult. A farmer in the area had lost track of a bunch of his livestock, most importantly, his award winning “cow de lait”. This one took 5 hours and was without doubt the worst part of Mileasia’s day. Upon realising that the cow was stuck in a bog, Mileasia tried simple levitation magic to get it out. And yet, all the magic did was force the cow into panic, making it thrash around and get further stuck in the bog. Magic force doesn’t work if what you’re forcing, forces back harder. Gerdam realised that they wouldn’t get paid if the “bleeding cunt of a cow” didn’t survive, so she opted to dive in after it, getting herself stuck in the process. Mileasia, after likening Gerdam’s attitude, intelligence and actions to that of the currently drowning cow, had to jump in after the both of them, this time, with a rope around her. Gerdam would not speak for several hours after she was rescued from certain death by bog. Even when they discovered the reason for the disappearance of the livestock was that of a wolf-lord in the area, Gerdam’s mood didn’t improve until well after the wolf was cut to pieces and served for dinner in the town square. Mileasia knows that Gerdam only needs a few shots of “Gohm’s Grog*” before she forgets all her worries and dances with the human children until she passes out. Always an adorable sight.

(*Popular Dwarven drink. Recommended doses: 2 shots intoxicates any full grown human. 1 shot for elves. 3 shots for orcs. 5 for dwarves.)

The third and fourth mission were done on Tuesday in the morning. Both of them were interconnected. Bandits had taken residence close to the overpass from “The Pinklands” to “Wilbur’s Barrow” which was halting trade in the area. A lovely and strangely quiet trader wanted an escort over the bridge and out of the city, “Two birds w’ one stone” as Gerdam so eloquently said, so they set off to deal with it.

Most of the conversation on the road towards the overpass was Gerdam trying to irritate the lady into talking, and yet despite her best efforts, the lady wouldn’t say more than a few words to everything she said.

“So, ya like having dwarves and elves do everything fo’ ya, is that it lassie?” – started Gerdam, bored, tired of sitting on the back of a cart and wanting to do something fun, like annoy humans.

  
“No” – she whispered back

“Ah, so you consider yourself independent, that right ae?” – Gerdam continued

“A little” – again, whispering

“Then why d’ ya bloody need an escort? You’re young, strong, I bet y’ could lift a sword, tackle a bunch of them to the ground and cut their willies off w’out much hassle, why dunnae ya?” – Gerdam said, sparked about something

“Gerdam, stop it” – said Mileasia, calmly. She was looking into the distance and had to turn around to look at the two. Noticing that Gerdam was practically leaning over everything in order to yell into the lady’s ear, she touched Gerdam’s shoulder and continued. “Not every human likes fighting, some simply wish to survive.”

“How bleedin’ boring” said Gerdam, slouching down. “Y’d think ye humans would wanna kill something every few minutes wit’ how bloody many of ye there are, like bloody rabbits, except less cute. Ya keel over dead and another 50 of ye replace ya instantly.”

“I don’t like fighting” – replied the lady, still very quietly.

“See, now leave her alone Gerdam, sit next to me and enjoy the ride” – said Mileasia

  
“Fine” – Gerdam replied.

When they arrived at the overpass with the strangely silent human woman, they saw exactly what the problem was. There was a fallen trunk of a tree on the road. Any passer-by would leave their carriage and go to move the trunk, be with magic or with force. Upon doing so, an archer would yell from the bushes and side forest land, challenging the potential tree-mover to try their luck, drop all their valuables and pass unharmed, or attempt to draw their weapon and see if they can draw faster than an arrow can fly. Mileasia opted for neither, teleporting behind the archer instantly and holding a knife to his throat, asking politely for the location of the other members of the trope. She received no answer, however, as she was ambushed on all sides. Gerdam was quick to respond, sprinting as fast as she could to the surrounding forest area and spinning in a circle, felling a few trees and crushing a few men against them, breaking bones, splintering spines and cracking ribcages. Mileasia also wasted no time, teleporting again 10 meters into the air and pulling an array of knives from her cloak, throwing them precisely against the group of men. Pinning several of the unfortunate souls to the ground by their necks. The luckier ones raised their shields, only to be met with overwhelming force, as Gerdam’s studded bat smashed through their wooden shields like they were made of glass, and crushing those with metal shields against the ground and surrounding bush area, which she then used to bounce on to crush more “crying gits” as they were called. The leader of the trope appeared out of the shrubbery, most likely from the small camp that was behind it. Brandishing his war-axe with pride before being subsequently attacked on two fronts from both the dwarf and the elf. He had no chance, being knocked into the air from the club (being welded like a bat) and slammed with a ball of electricity, exploding into several chunks of flesh, bone and blood. Mileasia simply used her cloak to absorb the impact, shaking off the more troublesome bits afterwards, then casting a small cleansing spell on Gerdam’s clothes, which she grumbled a “thanks” for, before moving towards the camp.

As they found out, there wasn’t just bandits there, they had set up explosives all around a cage and were holding some prince hostage. To start off with, Gerdam was against the idea of rescuing the prince, stating “well if we recuse the poor bugger, we should hold him hostage ourselves and keep the ransom”, which was countered by: 

“I understand, however, you must realise that becoming a wanted criminal in the region is certainly not part of our itinerary for today, besides, where shall we keep him? He cannot walk behind the horses as he is too fat and will simply stumble. Nor can he ride either of our horses because he will simply attempt escape, and I shall have to kill him” - replied Mileasia

“I’m right here ladies” 

“And he smells, he’s probably not showered in days” - said Mileasia, ignoring him completely. “I do not wish to drag a plump foul smelling pink-skin around like a war trophy” - she continued

“Again, right here” - mumbled the prince

“Oh, I suppose ye know what’s best f’ him then don’ ya? Shall we just march off into the sunset and leave him t’ his own devices? He’ll get killed by some tiger o’ something if we let him go now” – Gerdam replied angrily

“I can take care of myself” - said the prince, more confidently this time

“Quiet hun, grown-ups are talking” - replied Mileasia. 

The prince stayed quiet.

They eventually decided on a small plan for him, he would travel with the “quiet weird cart lady”, the name Gerdam had given to the lady they were supposed to escort until the next town, where most likely some wizard would pick him up and take him to his nearest castle or whatever. The lady suddenly became very talkative when the prince got on her cart, despite his broken appearance and smell, asking him a whole range of questions. Gerdam commented on this, stating that “she’s either a racist or very horny”.

The prince assured the elf and dwarf that no harm would befall the lady nor him. Mileasia gave him a potion of confusion anyway, with explicit instructions to “throw in the general direction of the assailants and they shall leave with haste, with thoughts of wild beasts raining death upon them”. If they survived, the mission would be completed. If they didn’t survive, then more than likely, they’d receive a very strong worded message from some guild leader that they would promptly ignore. 

When they turned around and started walking back to the closest settlement, they heard a loud noise. One of the bandits had snuck onto the cart and was holding a knife to the lady’s throat. The prince, was hiding a basket, trying not to be seen. Before Mileasia could teleport over there, the lady got up, grabbed the bandit by the arm and flipped him over her head into the dirt ground in front of her with a satisfying *thud*, crushing his back with an audible cracking sound. She turned around, waved at the 2 and shouted “I DON’T LIKE FIGHTING BECAUSE I ALWAYS WIN”

“So, she’s just horny then?” – Gerdam said

“Yes” – Replied Mileasia

The fifth mission was Gerdam’s favourite. Many dwarves love going underground, and while Mileasia much preferred to stay with her feet firmly planted on trees, she didn’t ‘hate’ underground, more what’s found underground. A Dwarf had simply lost her wallet in a chasm, and was too busy to go get it. “You can have whatever you find in it, there should be a few hundred golden pieces. Consider that your reward. I need the documents that are in there. I’ll give you 50 more pieces if you don’t read them.” 

This one they thought would be absurdly easy. At first. As dwarves have night vision, it wasn’t hard for Gerdam to walk around and search the bottom most tunnels for a missing wallet. Mileasia, however, needed to use a magic made light source to walk around without falling down a few hundred meters. They split up after an hour of searching and went in opposite directions. Mileasia has a fantastic sense of direction so she had no problems navigating the tunnels. Gerdam, like most dwarves, has no problems walking underground either, but was bored and opted to ´follow her nose´ and blunder around aimlessly. 

Eventually, Gerdam found a small hole in one of the underground tunnels, thinking it to be strange, she walked in and was greeted with an interesting surprise.

Mileasia, after getting annoyed with finding nothing, retraced her steps and realised that Gerdam was missing, and when she found a trail that entered a wall with no opening, she knew that there was only one thing that could have happened to Gerdam. 

“Gnomes” – she uttered.

There are 4 magical races in the world, humans in the south, dwarves to the east, elves to the west and orcs to the north. They are called the “4 magical races” because they fulfil 3 specific criteria. They can all use magic, they are self-aware and no 2 creatures are the same. While other creatures can use magic, they aren’t all self-aware. Gnomes fall under their criteria. They are very magical, and yet they share one mind. They can talk freely, and yet if you’ve met one gnome, you’ve met them all. They don’t care about any race but themselves, and are more than willing to live underground or in small locations, sucking moisture from rocks or stealing supplies from the surrounding areas without drawing much suspicion. They are genius level mathematicians and will be found working in banks or loan companies on occasion, but they will never even consider being friendly to any race that talks to them unless they want something. To put it simply, basic greetings such as “hello” and “goodbye” aren’t in their vocabulary, nor anything remotely similar to a basic conversation. Think “I want your food”, You give me this for my coins, good trade.” And the like.

Mileasia blasted open the hole in the wall and held out her hand, with 4 knives floating around it, ready to be shot at full speed and walked in, expecting the worst. What she found instead surprised her, but didn’t shock her.

Gerdam was in the middle of an arena of rock, set up like a very large and crudely made boxing ring. She was without her armour and had her clothes ripped up. The light sources around the room were stolen human and dwarven candles. She was bloody, covered in scratches and had been bruised. Her sleeves to her shirt were ripped and her muscles bulged out. Surrounding the underground rock ring were a large gathering of gnomes, all shouting and cheering. Facing Gerdam was a giant tunnel bear. Similar to a brown bear but completely blind, black fur, reinforced claws that are used to tunnel and is considered a “very scary predator” underground, feasting on dwarves and other underground inhabitants frequently. And yet, Mileasia simply made the knives disappear, sat down next to the ring and pulled out a book. Gerdam had been working hard these past few days, she deserved some diversion.

“Come here ya big black fucker!” – she shouted “I’ll scream at ya so ya know where I am, make it fair!”. 

The bear obliged. Swinging down and towards Gerdam, she dodged out of the way to the side and swung up with a fist, punching the bear straight in the jaw and knocking its head upwards. The bear growled and swiped again blindly, scratching across Gerdam’s chin and causing her to reel backwards. The gnomes cheered in unison. 

“That it? I’m not even hurt!” Gerdam screamed, rushing the bear with her arms outstretched, picking it up by the waist and sandwiching its arms against its body flipping it over her body, pile-driving it into the ground headfirst. She rolled out of the way and stood back up in a fighting stance, ready for the next swipe. 

The bear rushed her from the ground, jaw open, baring all its teeth. It got around Gerdam’s neck and tried to bite down, but Gerdam had already put her hands in-between the rows of teeth and was pushing back with force. 

“Nice try ya bastard! But you gotta try harder than that!”. Gerdam screamed and pushed the bear’s face away, punching it again straight in the nose, breaking off a piece of the bear’s tooth and forcing it to recoil, howling. 

Gerdam at this point ran back to the corner of the stone ring and started to climb, reading the top of the stone wall and looked down at the bear, as it was getting up again with a little bit of difficulty. And yet, Gerdam showed no mercy, as she jumped off the wall and kicked the bear in the face, slamming its head against the ground with her foot still in its face, crushing its head against the floor and then jumping off, doing a small front-flip and landing. The bear lay unconscious and Gerdam was met with overwhelming applause from the surrounding gnomes.

Gerdam raised her arms triumphantly, bowed and went to talk to one of them, who gave her the armour back, as well as an extra present, a small black wallet, which Mileasia knew probably belonged to the dwarven woman they spoke to earlier. Gerdam placed her armour back on and walked towards Mileasia. She simply nodded, put her book away and stood up. Clearly taller than everyone else in the cavern by at least a full metre. She then chanted for a few seconds, outstretched her arms and formed a small portal, which they stepped through and arrived back on the surface, only a few hundred metres from the home of the Dwarven girl that gave them the mission. 

“Underground gnome fighting rings aren’t very common, are they?” – said Mileasia.

“Nope, they wanted some fun in exchange for the wallet. I gave them a fight they’ll tell their grandchildren” – Gerdam replied. 

“Gnomes live to about 600 years old; you’ll be long dead before they even consider having children, let alone grandchildren”- Mileasia replied, casting a spell and hovering her arms over Gerdam’s head

“And yet they won’t forget my performance for a second, was the best bear fight I’ve had in weeks!” – Gerdam replied, her wounds starting to close and heal, while her clothes began to nit themselves back together. – “Let’s deliver that wallet and head back to camp”

“Agreed” – Said Mileasia. Smiling. 


	2. Middle

**_“Be ye heeving up the mountain, be ye coming home from war_ **

**_Be ye scavenging round some craters looking for some ore_ **

**_There’s always something watching ye from way up high above_ **

**_And it’ll fry you up and eat you up, just like a nice roast dove”_ **

“What are you singing?” Said Mileasia, more curious than annoyed

“Little Dwarven rhyme” replied Gerdam, whistling. “Back home where I live, we had a small wyvern problem. About 50 of the buggers were roosted on top of Dar’gar peak, and we couldn’t get rid of them for a while. They roasted a few miners in the area, and it was only when one of our generals was coming back from a campaign before getting lifted up and eaten did we finally do something about it” 

“I shall assume the ‘thing that was done’ was not ‘create a rhyme’, correct?” Said Mileasia, leaning back in her saddle.

“oh no” said Gerdam, skinning an apple. “We called up a bunch of orcish archers who came into the area and took out the beasts for us, didn’t ask for much either. Just some steel arrowheads. It’s apparently rare to have steel where they come from. The rhyme came a few weeks later”. She cut a piece of the apple and put it in her mouth. “Thought it was pretty catchy *crunch* so I asked them to teach it to me”

“Please do not speak with your mouth full” chastised Mileasia

“Yes  **mum** ” replied Gerdam.

Both warriors were on horseback going up a steep mountain pass. The sixth and final mission for them in this area was going to be the worst one, which is why they left it until last. Usually missions that have the least amount of words are the longest ones. “Go investigate disappearances”, for example, is relatively short, and usually involves 3 weeks of detective work before anything gets done. “Find my son” is shorter still, and involves fighting 800 spiders only to find the son’s skin and bones at the very end of it. I mean they still get paid; it’s just tiring. This one, they assumed, was no exception. 

“Pass me the note again, I wanna read it” grumbled Gerdam, her mood declining as she did not very much enjoy bouncing up and down on a horse that was clearly intended for a human. Mileasia rolled up the note and threw it towards Gerdam, steering it in mid-air and having it land into her open hand. 

“Strange sounds. Meet Jake at the mountain pass” Gerdam said, scanning the note. “That’s bloody it. They couldn’ve made it slightly more detailed, could they? 500 golden pieces each for ‘dealing with it’. I bet a bleeding human wrote this one.” She crumples the note up and throws it back. “‘Strange sounds’, aye, what type of feckin’ sounds? Howlin’? Cryin’? Chewin’? Screamin’? I’da like to know what I’m dealing with before I decide to risk my head looking for something that’s probably gonna turn out to be a bunch of bored teenagers using ventriloquist magic to scare the breeches off’a any idiot dumb enough to climb this mountain. Like ourselves.”

  
“Sarcasm is unbecoming of you” Mileasia said, hiding her smile

“Oh you ‘aven’t heard fookin’ nothin’ yet” retorts Gerdam. Inhaling loudly and beginning a torrent of angry insults and unmentionables, directed at the mission, the horse, the smell, her arse and Mileasia.

Mileasia hasn’t said this to her, but she’s able to tell how annoyed Gerdam is by the amount of letters she omits in a sentence. She lets Gerdam complain for the rest of the ride to the mountain pass, as it’s nice to hear some background noise while on horseback. Both of them were tired, hungry and cold, as the final task had them go towards the mountainous area close by. Many dwarven settlements are built close to mountains, not only due to the massive terrain advantage that mountainous strongholds provide, but also due to the high value ores that are found near the tops of mountains, near the crater, where magma mixes with whatever falls from the sky, melting it and turning it into absurdly pure metal. 

This dwarven stronghold, however, has long since been abandoned. It appears to be a few thousand years old. Strongholds are abandoned for a multitude of reasons, the most common being “no more ore”. This would explain the large amount of humans in the area, as dwarves like to be close to as many minerals as possible. No minerals = no dwarves. No dwarves + fertile terrain = human settlements. Agriculture has always been human’s strong point, and they’re not going to let highly fertile lands go to waste, even if they’re in Dwarven territory. This is why neither of them thought it was strange that they had only met a very few amount of dwarves, despite being in dwarven land. The dwarf that had lost her wallet was just travelling through as well, only staying for a few days at an inn before going on her way. “Probably a messenger” Gerdam had said.

A few days ago, a few humans the day of the feast spoke to Mileasia about their journey to the mountains. They didn’t know anything about the strange sounds on the mission note, but they did say they occasionally see light reflected off the stronghold, which they always found a bit strange because dwarves don’t usually use glass in their buildings, yet they didn’t bother investigating, as it was far away and they figured it was just the human explorers in the area sometimes scavenging the stronghold for whatever was left behind. 

Gerdam was too drunk to remember this, but one of the explorers speaking to Mileasia mentioned this: “You reach the stronghold’s base around 400m up, there you take a lift to the bottom platform. We sometimes look through the place, just writing down what we find. Dwarves from a few thousand years ago aren’t that different from dwarves now, what ain’t broke don’t fix I suppose.”

“Probably a historian” Mileasia thought, nodding at him to continue.

“But for some reason, the top platform has an entranceway to the mountain that’s completely blocked off. They weren’t even neat about it; it just looks like a few hundred boulders were put in front of the opening they were using to purge the mountain.” The old historian finished.

“what do you think it is?” Mileasia asked, watching Gerdam lift some infant off the ground and spin it around in circles

“Beats me. I’d say it was a cave-in, but when have dwarves ever had a cave in? Any dwarf who’s been mining for more than 20 minutes could punch a rock and tell you how stable it is and how much it’s worth.” the old man clicked his fingers, sparking a flame to light a cigarette. “No. The pessimist in me tells me it’s something more than that, something dark. But the realist in me tells me they probably got attacked by a rival clan, and they didn’t want the other clan to have their minerals. So, they blocked it off.” he breathes in and exhales smoke into the air. “If we can’t have it. No-one can. Rather similar to humans, aren’t they?

Mileasia looks back at Gerdam, watching her playing tag with several children, falling over and being subsequently pounced on by all of them at once, before grunting and lifting 5 of them into the air while they all scream in amazement

“Yeah” Mileasia says. “We’re not that different at all”.

“Mileasia! Are you in there? We’ve arrived. Stop looking at me arse and get off your high horse” Gerdam shouts, loudly pulling Mileasia back into reality. 

She looks around. The area that they’re in now is to be expected of a rather tall mountain, around 2km tall and surrounded by several other smaller mountains, leading to a rather strange looking mountain range. The stronghold looms above. Very typically dwarven, going almost entirely for functionality rather than beauty. The stronghold is more like a protruding keep rather than a fortress, being suspended by large beams that go deep into the surrounding mountains. A strong supporting beam goes straight from one of the other mountains into another, with the third (and largest) mountain only having one beam sticking out of it, meeting up with the other beams in the middle. It appears that the circular black keep was built with these beams supporting it, and they simply laid the framework around the meeting point of these 2 beams, at the conjunction point of the “T” shape.

A large square platform lays just above them, black, like the keep, and made of some sort of metal and stone combination. Atop the platform is a large lift, clearly intended for ore and machines instead of just a few people, with chains, pulleys, cogs and other things going from it towards the main keep in the middle. There are other platforms like this, but a bit higher up on the other mountains, with roads leading from them going down the mountain. With typical dwarven fashion, safety was clearly not thought about at all. Even the steps going up and down the mountain have no supporting beam, meaning with one small misstep, you’re going to fall a few hundred metres to your death. Thankfully, dwarven rock-metal doesn’t freeze. 

“You can even walk on it with bare feet.” Gerdam would say. “But, don’t. Your petite little elven feeties would freeze up from the cold, not cause of our metal. It just means you don’t gotta worry about slipping”

In front of them is a small abode, the entranceway being wide enough to fit horses in, with a roof, windows and a chimney. Inside was a shape, from the windows you can see it hurriedly moving around from one room to the next like some sort of hyperactive child. Gerdam, not wanting to waste time, knocks on the door, loudly shouting “OI, UNLOCK THE DAMN DOOR, WE’RE FREEZING OUR TITS OFF HERE”

The shape moves to the door and opens it fully, stepping outside, it bows, looks up and presents itself. It is wearing a coat of leather and fur, grey, with fur around the hood. It has goggles on and the same type of clothing for pants. Black boots and a sword in its holster. 

“G’day!” it says. “Name’s Jake! Didn’t think you’d be getting here so soon so I haven’t put the jug on! Sorry bout that! Haha. Was stark naked before you both arrived, bet I looked like a maniac running around there. Come on in! Bring ya horses in! I’ll be your guide”. 

Another human. This one has a weird accent. It seemed very cheerful at least, with a grin on its face and a strange smell emanating off of it. Gerdam barges past with her horse and pulls Mileasia’s horse after her. Ushering both of them inside. The human Jake closes the door after them. 

“Make yaselves at home, although I haven’t had visitors in a while. Just old man John comes here from time to time, plus Mary, Bob and Jill whenever we go up to the stronghold. So, try not to pay too much attention to the papers, it’s just our research.” Jake says, with his strange accent. He’s pushing things to the side and trying to clean up when Gerdam announces very loudly, “where the FUCK is the bathroom”. Jake leads her down the hall and round a corner, and Mileasia looks around after making sure the horses are well set up in the indoor sty.

The small human made hut is very messy. Mileasia notices that it’s not very big, only with 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a main lounge area that doubles as a horse pen, a small kitchen and an office, which is currently closed. There’s papers and books everywhere, strewn around at random. There is basic furniture, it looks like it’s more of an outpost than anything else. The back entrance goes towards some steps that lead up to the platform. She glances down and looks at one of the pieces of paper on the ground and notices that there’s a drawing on it, that of a small creature overseeing a metal box of some sorts. Surrounding the box are shapes, that appear to be guarding into the box. Before she can bend over and grab the paper, Jake picks it up. 

“Sorry again about that!” he says, his accent making every word he says very difficult to understand. Mileasia was used to the rough pronunciation of every word from Gerdam, yet this man was absolutely not making things easy for her. Wishing she had paid more attention in “human studies” class, she opted to get straight to the point. 

“So, you are the one they call Jake. Tell me, what is it that we are doing here?” she says, looking down upon him.

“Well, glad you asked my tall pointy friend. Listen, a few days ago we heard some rumbling coming from inside the blocked passageway up top here.” He stops briefly as Gerdam walks back in, then invites them to sit at a table where there’s a large hand-drawn map of the area on. “We wanted to get a strong adventurer up to take a gander and see if they could get it open, or find some way to get inside and look around. The thing is, some of the sounds we’ve been hearing from it have us spooked.” He stops briefly and points to one of the portraits on the wall. “we got a monsterologist on the team who said he recognizes the smell coming from the rocks, and it’s from this big fuck-off snail thing that spits acid at you. So, we needed someone to open up the entrance, look inside, off the big snail wanker and guard me while we take a look around. I’m not much of a fighter you see. But I need to know what’s inside”. 

“Great, another suicidal human risking their life for science” Mileasia thinks.

“Great, another suicidal human risking their life for science” Gerdam says out loud. “I could stab you here and save us the trouble?” 

“Uh, no thank you!” Jake says, looking at the club in the corner of the room. “Look, I just like looking at things. And these caves haven’t been explored for thousands of years. I just wanna look around. We have the coin, and as long as I get back alive, the guild will give it to you. Now, please, I’m ready whenever you’re ready.”

Mileasia looks at Gerdam, who looks back at her. 500 gold to help some dit look around a dusty old mine shaft seems too good to be true. But at the same time, humans have paid them for worse things. They nod. And Jake mentions “Alright! One last thing, it gets windy as fuck up there, so you may want something to cover your face.”

Mileasia pulls a green scarf out of her cloak and wraps it around her face, exposing even less of what was there before. 

Gerdam looks at Jake in the eyes, then looks down at her beard, then looks back at Jake. 

Jake nods. And they set out the back door, leaving the horses behind.

The walk up to the platform is uneventful, and the elevator ride to the keep even less so. Dwarven machinery is good, even thousands of years after its disuse. Dwarven machinery was so incredibly advanced for its time, that many thought they were time-travellers with the things that they built. This lift works with a simple hand-crank system, which Mileasia controls telekinetically while they shield their faces from the blistering cold. 

Once they get to the keep, they get off the lift at the very bottom, and truly realise how massive it is. It looks like a basic human keep, 5 stories tall, each story many meters into the air. The bottom floor is the great hall, which they walk through. The place is quiet and windy, with open square windows with no glass. It looks like a gigantic loading bay. While they walk, they notice that Jake is giving them a small amount of history on every floor they walk through. 

“This was the main meeting hall. They would have decided what they wanted to do with all the minerals here. They would’ve used this place for storage, meetings, machinery and combustion. They probably took the machines and furnaces with them when they left. For now, this place is just empty” Jake says, looking around. He’s clearly been here many times before.

“Are ya seriously trying to tell me dwarven history human?” Gerdam says, looking up at him. 

“Well, do you know what these rooms were used for? Do you have anything interesting you want to add?” Jake asks, politely.

“Well, no, I have no idea…” Replies Gerdam. Looking down at the ground.

“Okay, let’s continue” Jake says. Gesturing towards the spiral staircase at the end of the room. The spiral staircase starts off at the very bottom, and like most dwarven staircases, it’s incredibly big and able to hold multiple people at once, yet it has no supporting beams and goes around the full circumference of the keep, similar to walking around the inside of a water tower, but in an anti-clockwise fashion. Jack mentions that there are lifts for the floors, but they were operated by power, animals and batteries, which is no longer in use.

As they walk up the tower staircase, they start to get an idea of how big the place is. Every floor is at least 50m tall and the walls only going up a few meters, it’s similar to being inside a hospital. There are no “rooms” mostly just areas with walls that go up 2m or so. Anyone working on a machine on the ground could look up and see dwarves walking up the staircase. As they look down at the floor below them and see that it must have been used for a huge amount of ore. Dwarven mining machines are also absurdly large in size and the room looks like it could have held about 4 of the mega-machines. There are scrapes and scratches everywhere, showing that the floor was used for a wide variety of many different machines and technology, probably the testing area too if the blast stains are anything to go off.

The following floor, Jake says, was used for foodstuffs and cleaning. That is to say, animals, clothes, bedsheets, kitchens, bathrooms and toilets were all found on this floor. They see that many of the rooms are divided into little sections, as they obviously needed to keep the toilets away from the food, and the animals away from the kitchens. Pigs like to eat waste, so some pipes lead there. They start to feel the burn of the staircase at this point, and start wishing for the lifts to be working, but all they see is square holes in the floor and ceiling with nothing leading from them, meaning they were probably dismantled when the dwarves left this place. Jake was right, this area was clearly used for animals. There are many “rooms” that have dirt and mud in them. There were quite possibly trees at one point. The black stone walls and floor would normally make it hard to see the places below them, but thankfully there are square holes in the wall, where mountainous wind and sunlight is getting in. There are shutters, but there’s no reason to do so, as it would take hours to close up all the holes. There is a build up of snow just inside the windows, but there’s no frost. Jake mentions this also “yeah so y’see, it’s impossible to freeze dwarven stone-metal. So, while sure, snow gets in and makes things annoying, this floor is very grippy, you won’t fall at all, as nothing’s frozen. You could blast true ice onto this floor for hours and it wouldn’t even make a difference”.

They march on. 

The third floor is the main operations room. This room has a massive table in it, which was impossible to move. Most likely there were grand feasts at this table. Surrounding it were balconies where guards would patrol, lookouts for the lands below them. This room would have had the entertainment, rest areas and basically anything non-mining related. There are torch stands, chandeliers, and decorations on the ceiling and 2 statues in either sides of the room. Both dwarves, except about 30m tall. Both dwarves are carved out of some type of grey rock, which contrasts quite nicely with the black interior of the keep. The carving process was clearly done very well, but with weaker stone, as several pieces (such as noses, toes and hands) had come off, and were lying on the floor below. Both dwarves are holding giant rock spears, and typically dwarven armour for the time, with fur, belts and weapons attached to them. Most likely, these statues were modelled after the dwarves in question. The dwarven king and dwarven queen of the time. Mileasia looks up and tries to see the features on their faces, and while it’s difficult to tell, she spots something engraved onto the face of the closest one. Uncertain what it is, she asks Gerdam about it. She just shrugs and keeps walking, asking Jake if he remembers who they were.

“I can’t remember their names” Jake admits. “They were strong, I know that much, but dwarves have so many kings and queens that change all the time, it’s really hard to know which ones they were. Plus, they all look so-“ he cuts off his sentence.

“So what?” Gerdam says, edging closer to the human. “Say it, ‘alike’ right? All dwarves look ‘alike?’”.

“I meant to say magnificent” Jake stammers. “All dwarven kings and queens look so… great! Yes, great!”    
“Well, they look the bloody same to me. I’m a dwarf and I canne even tell them apart” Gerdam admits, laughing and slapping Jake on the back.

Jake swallows and keeps walking.

The fourth-floor tour seems to be going well. Jake was mostly explaining how dwarven bedrooms were divided “See, this place was the lodging. Look at all these rooms, it kind of looks like a maze from up here but everything was well labelled. None of these bedrooms have rooves, obviously, nobody wants to make walls that are 50 tall. But you could cover the top of your bedroom by simply pressing a button and watching a mini-roof slide overtop, so you can get some privacy. You can still see some beds used here, as we all know, dwarves sleep for only 6 hours and can basically sleep on rocks, so the beds here are very uncomfortable. But this is where they stored personal belonging and AAAHH” Jake is suddenly cut off. In front of them, on the staircase, are two dwarven guards. Both of them staring down at the trio. The guards looked, off. While they are clearly dwarven, their clothes seem tattered. Their beards, unkept and hair missing. Their skin is clammy and light. Their armour, broken, and the skin is peeling off their flesh. Both dwarves are holding weapons, one with a spear and round shield, and the other with a longsword. Clearly, dead. 

The dwarves look down at them, open their mouths and a torrent of bats fly out, heading towards them. Before anyone has a chance to react, Mileasia jumps in front of them and holds out her hand, having a light blue glow come out from it. The bats start bouncing off the reflective shield and scream, before flying up and going back inside the bodies of the dwarves.

Gerdam is already on duty, as she jumps out from behind Mileasia and charges at the two dwarves, who ready themselves but don’t even bother blocking as Gerdam’s bat smashes into them and knocks them off the ground. Their bodies practically folding under the weight of the swing, knocking them off the staircase and towards the ground below. As they fall, thousands upon thousands of bats leave their bodies, and both bodies land on the ground with a horrifying crunching sound, breaking a bunk-bed and the other breaking a wooden shelf. Then lying still.

Jake screams “What the bloody fuck was that?”

“Ghouls” Mileasia replies. “They are dwarfs, but they are clearly possessed by something. Either there’s a necromancer nearby or this tower has a monster problem.

“When was the last bloody time you walked up this castle?” Gerdam shouts, watching as the bats howl and fly back into the broken bodies

“A few weeks ago.” Jake says, drawing his sword and nearly fumbling it to the ground. “These things weren’t here then…”

The dwarves are already back upright, and snap their necks towards the trio. Rushing towards the staircase behind them

“OH SHIT!” Jake screams. “What do we do now??”    
“Up!” Shouts Mileasia, grabbing Jake and pushing him upwards, then shoots a few daggers towards the dwarves down below. Of the five shots, 1 misses and the other 4 strike, smacking into the faces of the dwarves. They hardly seem to be affected by it, simply removing the knives from their eyes and cheeks and continuing their ascent. Gerdam curses also, and starts moving faster, grabbing Jake and pushing him along with her.

Not wanting to fight on a staircase, the trio sprint as fast as they can up the staircase, pushing out into the open and final floor of the tower, the roof. The place is bare and loud, wind screams at them and stings their eyes and faces. Mileasia turns around and puts her hands into the air, outstretched in front of her, revealing her leather suit underneath. The hands surge with magic, as fireballs are created in both hands. She levels them at the stairs, and waits.

“Fuck me I’m tired” Gerdam says, sitting down and catching her breath. “Jake my boy, you can rest now. She’s got it”

Jake looks up in surprise, holding onto his knees while he breathes in thin mountain air gaspingly. “Why are you sitting down?” he says, puzzlingly. “Those things will come up any second”

Gerdam pulls a bag out from one of her pockets. “Yeah, and then Mileasia will blow them straight to hell”. She pulls out a sandwich from the bag. “And once she does, we’ll be on our way.”

Jack looks back at Mileasia, she’s slightly levitating off the ground, looking intently at the staircase. He re-sheaths his sword and sits down too, hugging his legs because of the cold. 

“…pposed to be down here…” he mutters

“What was that?” Gerdam says, mouth full of egg and cheese sandwich

“Nothing” replies Jack. Still shivering.

In the next few seconds, the two dwarves shoot out the stairwell. They barely have time to adjust themselves as Mileasia holds her hands together and releases a ball of energy, with flames streaking from it straight at both of them. The ball impacts both the dwarven ghouls with such force that neither of them have a chance to react, they’re both shot off the battlements, entirely aflame and letting off a horrible screaming sound. Mileasia assumes it’s just the bats from inside the bodies being cooked alive. She puts her hands back into her cloak and turns around, looking at the trembling Jack and Gerdam sitting back eating a sandwich. 

“Ghouls weren’t on the contract. We demand an account adjustment” – says Mileasia, bluntly.

“Anything, I didn’t know it would be like this either” he says, looking down into the abyss below, both the bodies are barely visible, only the light emanating from the burning bodies makes the dwarven ghouls appear in the dark void below. Despite it only being roughly midday, the mountain seems to be in a constant state of twilight. 

“50 per ghoul found” says Gerdam, standing up again. “Or we jump off and you don’t see us again.

“Deal” he says through chattering teeth. Whether it be from the cold or the fright of seeing two reanimated corpses is unknown to even him.

Mileasia nods and brushes past both of them, headed towards the bridge that’s linked to one of the sides of one of the mountains. “Let’s go” she says.

As they walk along the bridge, Gerdam looks below and takes in the view. It’s dark, sure. They are currently in-between 5 separate mountains, hundreds of metres into the air, but the village that they were staying at the past few days is still visible. The rest of the area is blocked by the other mountains, but they can still see pretty far. The forest area close to the village is swaying with a heavy breeze. The lakeside has ripples coming off of it. The small other settlements below are still seen, with the shine of the sun bouncing off the glass windows. The mountainous air is cold, bitter and thin. She notices that it’s slightly harder to breathe than normal, but not too bad. The most difficult thing for her is trying to groom her beard while wearing gloves. 

They cross the bridge without difficulty, and before them lies the gigantic pile of boulders, sealing an entrance to the mountainside. 

“Here we are” Jack says, shivering slightly less than before. “This is where I wanted to see. Let’s get inside, have a look around for a while, and then when I’ve drawn a few diagrams, we can get back down the mountains. I’m assuming you” he turns to Mileasia “know some way to slow our descent, correct?”

“Yes” she replies

“Okay. Well after we’re done, let’s take the express route down. For now, I just need to get inside, could you please open up th…” 

He is suddenly cut off. Gerdam has him pinned by the neck against the rockface. Holding him there with one hand while the other wields a dagger, which she spins deftly around her fingers. “Alright, now’s talkin’ time you fucking pink-skin. Spill what you know, or I’ll spill your guts over this nice rock here.

“I… Wha…” he says, before being choked slightly harder.

“Please do not play dumb with us, o humble human. We simply wish to know as to why you withheld important details from us, such as the ghouls, or the death symbols on the statues, or the fact that you’re investigating dwarven disappearances in this area”

“How did yo…” he starts, before gasping for air

“You suck at hiding papers pink-boy” shouts Gerdam. “Now talk. Why was the note so vague?”

“I… Look, we knew it was dangerous up here, that’s why we only wanted high level adventurers to come here… Like you two!” he stammers “we didn’t know it was ghouls, we just knew that the area was ripe with powerful magical energy. I swear!”

“So, explain then” asks Mileasia “why did you not think it was important to tell us?”

“Because I didn’t know what it was either! You must have received a warning when you accepted the mission, that you could potentially face a huge monster threat!” he stammers between bated breaths.

“We get that warning on every mission” says Gerdam. “We’re S class.”

“What do you know?” says Mileasia, clearly not impressed with this answer.

“Okay! Look! A thousand years ago, they sealed up this gateway and nobody can figure out why.” Gerdam loosens her grip slightly, and lets him stand on his two feet, yet not removing the chokehold. He continues. “We’ve heard stories of monsters and demons and dragons and everything. But dwarves don’t back away from things like that. If there’s a dragon roosted on a mountaintop, dwarves simply trade with it. When there’s monsters, dwarves simply send in humans. When there’s magic energy, the mage’s guild is usually notified. We know these mountains aren’t fully hollow, and we know the dwarves left in a hurry. That’s why we have found so many things. The only thing we know for certain, is that there’s something inside this mountain. I want to know what it is! That’s it! I promise!” he says, coughing.

“Death symbols on the statues?” Mileasia asks

“No idea. Maybe there were some cultists here a few hundred years ago. I don’t know.” He replies

“Ghouls?” Gerdam asks

“Nope. Can’t tell you. I was just as surprised to see them as you are. I don’t think it’s a necromancer though, all necromancer locations are noted by the mage’s guild, and they haven’t told us that there’s any in this area. G-bats are quite common around dwarven strongholds, they were probably just using their bodies for scouting”

“Dwarven disappearances?” Mileasia and Gerdam ask in unison. After looking at Jack’s surprised face they answer. “We’re fast readers”

“Okay. This was just one theory. We know that the number of Dwarves working here 1200 years ago was 421. When they left, there were only 210 accounted for. That’s 211 disappearances, over half their workers went missing in the space of about 5 years. That’s well over the number of causalities commonly found in mining missions. 5 or 10 is normal. Over half? And no aid was called in? That’s fishy. That’s what I was investigating before.”

Gerdam looks around. Releases her grip and spits in the chasm below and looks back at the human. 

“What d’ya think it was?” she asks

“My guess, they found a monster in there.” He stops and looks at Gerdam. “One that eats dwarves. Not wanting to risk more dwarven lives, they sealed off the entrance and starved it out. It’s long dead by now, with no food source and no way to leave, it would have died long long ago. I want to see what it was. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”.

Not fully satisfied with the answer, Gerdam looks at Mileasia, she nods her head and then steps forward. 

“Anything else?” Mileasia asks

“That’s it. I just want to see what’s inside. The findings could be invaluable. A monster that only eats dwarves? Monserology would be brought very far with this.” He replies. “Sorry. If I had told you, you mightn’t’ve wanted to go. Nobody wants to go up here”

Gerdam walks up to the closest boulder blocking the entrance. She looks up at the sheer size of the rubble and places her hand on it. 

“Human”. She speaks. “Let me explain this situation as best as I can.”

A sound is heard coming from Gerdam’s hand. Her eyes briefly flash and blue light erupts from her hand, piercing the boulder in front of her with a powerful light. With a huge crashing sound, light and energy shoots out of her hand, decimating the rock and smashing open a hole big enough for 3 horses to walk comfortably through.

“Take your fuckin’ notes. Poke your fuckin’ skeletons. Don’t hide details from us again. And if we find out you had anything to do with these ghoul attacks. Well…” she looks at the hole she just made. The back to Jack.

Jack looks at her in awe, and then to Mileasia for some sort of explanation.

“Dwarves are pretty good at destruction magic” answers Mileasia, looking at the bewildered human. “Just because she carries that giant thing around, doesn’t mean she can’t blast open a mountainside if she feels like it.”

The two start forward, not waiting for Jack to compose himself. Truth be told, they were both curious too. Mileasia is a fan of history, whereas Gerdam is more interested in what old dwarven warriors used for weapons. Both wanting to find something inside the hole, they continue down the passageway that Gerdam has made for them. 

“Gerdam…” Mileasia suddenly says, reaching her arm out towards her friend. Gerdam turns and sees her friend fall to the floor with an arrow protruding from her side, going through her cloak and into her, there’s blood around the wound. 

“You traitorous fuc-“ Gerdam starts, raising her club and turning around, before she’s hit in the side with something else, she stumbles, and the human rushes her, swiping her arm with a small blade. Something green seeps off the blade, falling to the floor below. Poison.

“I’m sorry dwarf” starts Jack, looking down at her as her eyes start to close. A shape is seen next to Jack, yet Gerdam can’t seem to make out what it is. “He promised me so much”. 

Gerdam drops to one knee. She reaches for her sword on her back but can’t seem to unsheathe it. Her eyes can’t stay open anymore. She’s too tired. She stumbles, falls to the floor, and sees her friend being dragged away by a black shape. She tries to call out.

“Milly…” she starts, before her head hits the floor.


	3. Chapter 3

**_The mountain speaks, the mountain moans, the mountain hears all your groans_ **

**_Ye be safe round these parts, while on horseback or in your carts_ **

**_Run dwarf run, while you still have time_ **

**_The mountain will gobble you up before I finish my rhyme_ **

“Kids, what are you doing? Get back over here” says Mary. A human trader coming down south to sell her vegetables

“Ah just let them” says her husband Brent. “They just want to explore. Besides, we have to wait for the wheel to be fixed”

“I know” replies Mary. “But this mountain pass is cold. They don’t have their coats on, and they won’t stop jumping on those rocks”

The caravan is at a complete halt, a few minutes ago the front wheel broke on the lead wagon, which caused all 3 vehicles to grind to a halt. Brent was kneeling down next to it, with the help of Gor, an orc blacksmith, they were in the process of removing and attaching a new wheel. 

While the surrounding area is beautiful, all 5 mountains loom over them like giants watching down from above, Mary can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. 

She turns around and gets back inside the wagon. The horses are calm for the moment, albeit cold and restless. There is no grass around this area, only snow, so the horses are stamping their hooves impatiently, trying to keep warm. The other members of the trope are inside the wagons, smoking and playing some card games. She lies down in one of the corners and grabs her book, wanting to take her mind off things. As she notices the light underneath the wagon’s tarp isn’t very good, she goes and grabs a hand lantern. With care as to not light any of the crates on fire, she clicks her fingers and summons a small flame which she puts on the candlewick. She adjusts the burner to give off a brighter heat and sits up with her back against a crate labelled “peas”. 

Surprisingly, she hears a groan. One of the kids must be feeling ill from all the bumping around of the journey and went inside her cart to rest. She sighs and opens her book, while mumbling “if you’re gonna be sick, please do it  **outside** the wagon. It’s impossible to clean up otherwise”

The groan gets louder, and Mary sighs again. “Alright I’ll help you out, come he-“ she cuts off her sentence. The groan isn’t from one of the children, in the back of the wagon is the dwarven elder they were taking with them. He is currently clutching his head and squeezing his eyes closed while muttering something in dwarven. 

“Horido, are you okay?” She asks, crawling closer to him. 

“Garrda mon carzea ef est mataraomi… kon mista douchindo… raino dwarf?” he opens his eyes. “Mary” says Horido.

“Yes, it’s me, do you need something? I have some water in one of the pouches over here…” she starts, before being cut off by Horido

“We need… To get moving… Now…” he says, crawling towards the entrance of the wagon. “Something’s… coming…” he continues, between bated breath.

“What’s coming?” she says, confused

“He’s… he’s crawling into my head… He wants me to go up” Horido says, pointing towards the stronghold above them. “He wants me to get inside, he wants me… to come back…” 

Mary looks at him in wonder, unsure what to do. She calls out to her husband “Brent! Something’s wrong with Horido!”

Brent is standing with his back to the wagon holding a cigarette in his mouth, currently looking at cards with Gor, who towers over him by a good 70cm. He stops what he’s doing and looks at them both, before taking his gaze back to his cards.    
“He’s just an old tired dwarf” says Brent, uncaring. “Let him get some fresh air for a few seconds. He’ll be fine”

Mary begins to protest, but she is cut off again by screams

She turns around and looks towards her children, who were playing with some black lumps not moments ago, now sprinting back towards her.

Both the black rocks are standing up now, their bodies fat and full of insects. The children are howling and crying

One of the black rocks looks at Mary. It’s not looking like a rock anymore. The dwarven features are visible. Eroded, broken and burnt, but still distinctly dwarven

The two dwarves look around them. They look at Horido and Horido looks at them.

“veni, Dwarf” says one of the dead dwarves 

“no” Horido replies, holding a hatchet “no mon poidie ovligous”

The dwarf on the right snaps his head to his side and looks at what’s approaching them

Brent is charging towards them with a longsword, behind him by a few metres is Gor, taking an axe out of his wagon 

The dwarf unsheathes his sword and throws it, piercing Brent’s abdomen and making him fly backwards, pinning him to the cart.

Gor drops his axe in surprise and steps back

Mary looks in horror at her husband. 

Both the dwarves look back at Horido and start marching towards him

Horido readies himself

The children hide behind Mary

Mary screams.

  
  


The room is bright and metallic. Neither Mileasia’s head nor her side feel pleasant right now, as both feel like a band of elephants have been dancing on each one for the past few hours. She suddenly feels overwhelmingly nauseous and throws up in the corner, she looks down at it and notices that it’s jet black, turning to steam and evaporating before her eyes. She coughs a few times before getting up and looking around. She checks her hands in front of her and notices that they’re bound with a type of red rope, which appears to be pulsating around her hands like a heartbeat. She’s seen this type of rope before, it’s commonly used to hold magical criminals, as the pulsating from the rope “sucks” the magic out of the system. It’s extremely debilitating to elves especially, considering their affinity to magic. She tries to pull on it with her teeth, but it sends searing pain through her mouth and causes her to scrunch up her face before resigning herself to sit down at the bench inside her current residence. 

“Where am I?” She wonders aloud, looking at her surroundings. The walls are metallic and silver, same as the ceiling, the room itself is roughly 2x3x3. There is one door to her right and a window with bars across it to her left. The bench she is sitting on is wide enough to sit, but not wide enough to lie down without falling off. She looks down at herself and sees the familiar black leather suit she’s wearing, completely untouched, along with her cloak. The only thing missing is her boots, which makes sense considering they have bladed tips. After checking that nothing else is missing, she stands up with some difficulty and tries the door. Locked, of course. 

“Damn” she wonders. “So, I have been taken prisoner somewhere. Jack must have set us up, we were right to distrust him.” She walks over to the window. “I need to find a way out of here and find Gerdam again. If they are keeping me prisoner and have not killed me, it means they must want me for something. I shall make a priorities list”

She tries to look up to the window, but it is about 2m high, a bit taller than her frame of roughly 1.75m

“Priority 1. Escape this place.”   
She jumps to try and meet the window

“Priority 2. Find Gerdam”   
She jumps again, again missing the window

“Priority 3. Remove binds”

She jumps for a third time; this time looking into the window and sees a flash of dark grey.

“Priority 4. Kill Jack”

As she jumps again, she notices that the flash of dark grey is no longer there, being replaced instead with two blood red eyes looking back at her. She lets out a small gasp and stumbles back, falling over in the process. The eyes blink once and then go back, being replaced instead with a mouth.

“Who are you?” The mouth says. Perhaps “says” isn’t the correct word. “Grunts” would be more appropriate.

“I will answer your question with a question of mine” retorts Mileasia. “What have you done with my friend?”

“Your friend?” the mouth replies. “You came here with a friend?”

“Are you not aware of this?” replies Mileasia. “You are not my captor?”

“I am not” the mouth replies. “I’m Jil”

“Jil?” replies Mileasia. She thinks for a few seconds and mulls over the word in her head, before realising how familiar this name sounds. “I have heard this name before. Do you know of a man called John?”

Jill gives a small gasp. “John’s still alive? I haven’t heard from him in a few days.”

“Describe John to me” Mileasia orders, suspiciously. She is yet to fully understand who this person is or what they want. 

“John, he’s an old man, late 60’s.” starts Jil. “Pleasant voice, black beard. Lives close by. Good with kids. He’s also my old boss” Jil stops quickly. “If you’re here too, they must have you as well. I am sorry elf. We are both trapped.”

Mileasia stands back. The voice before her described John perfectly. Elven custom dictates that friends and allies must be greeted the first time you meet them. She crosses her left leg over her right leg and bends both of them at a slight angle. She bows her head and bends over slightly, holding her hands out in front of her.

“My name is Mileasia Crownguard” She states. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I would have bowed much more gracefully had my hands not been bound, however I hope this will suffice for now.” She stands back up and looks at the face staring back at her. “I am friends with one Gerdam Hammershard. Her and I were ambushed by a human called Jack. This human lured us into the cave and struck us from behind, he appeared to have friends. We were helping him explore the dwarven stronghold and potentially look inside a mountain for evidence to help one of his monsterologist friends. We did not fully trust him from the beginning, as his accent was very strange. He appears to know more about what was going on than he let on. When we confronted him, he lied about the ghouls in the area, as one was at his side when he attacked us.”

“I see” Jil replies. “It is nice to meet you Mileasia. I can give some insight on Jack. Considering we will probably be here for a while, why don't you take a seat, elf”

Mileasia approaches the window and holds onto it, pulling herself up a few centimetres and looking inside. She sees before her the shape of an orc, immediately recognisable as a female, as she has an odd number of tusks. 1, coming out the right side of her mouth. Her skin is dark grey, and her red hair is bound in a messy bun, with two braids coming off either side of her head. Her face is sad and looks slightly malnourished, with her bright blood red eyes being the most prominent feature. She has a septum piercing in her nose which is also red. Her ears are slightly pointy, yet nowhere near as pointy as that of an elf’s. Her clothes are that of more of a scholar than a warrior, which is not very typical for orcs as they usually wear armour or protective leather, although, orcs barely wear clothes anyway. She has bandages wrapped around her chest which cover up her breasts and a small brown leather overcoat with short sleeves. The overcoat is parted in the middle and contains many pockets, all of which are empty, yet big enough to hold things such as pens or small notebooks. She is wearing a brown belt with pouches on it, which are again empty. The belt holds up short black shorts, made out of a material Mileasia is not familiar with yet it looks human in design. Around her thigh is an empty sheath big enough to hold a dagger. However, considering how big Jil is (roughly 2.10m) it would be considered a short sword to humans. She is wearing brown walking shoes. This is not the sight of a powerful orc warrior, this is an orc scholar, and one that is very far out of her depth.

Orc society is based on strength, which is what most people know orcs from. They’re big, strong and will crush your head with their bare hands. However, strength doesn’t just come from brawn. Orcs respect strength in any and every form, whether it be physical, mental or spirit. A strong orc could be one that is strong enough to make difficult decisions for their people. Or smart enough to keep their people safe from attacks. Some orc generals are not even warriors, simply orcs smart enough to reach a high ranking position. These orcs require a lot of protection obviously, yet are still respected for their mental strength. Mileasia figured this orc in front of her was the latter, as while she was certainly stronger looking than most humans, she was not anywhere near as strong looking as some of the orcs she has fought in one on one combat, her outfit was very reminiscent of that of a librarian or archaeologist.

“As I said before, my name is Jil” the orc replies, her voice slightly echoing over the metallic walls. “I came here with my friends Mary and Bob. John was the leader of our trope and we accepted Jack a little bit later. John was the one who suggested this stronghold exploration, we were wanting to take on a large project like this and a team was needed to check out the entire castle. Bob was the only other orc, our “bodyguard” so to speak, as you can never be sure of what you can find in ancient remains. Mary was our human mage, she was more of a scout than anything, she got us where we needed to go, however we needed to get there. Teleportation, rope, levitation, she could do it. Absolutely useless in a fight though. John was our human companion; he came from a village close to the stronghold. A few days after we accepted Jack, John admitted that he wanted to retire, which was the main reason Jack was chosen. Jack was an old friend of John’s that he met at university and hadn’t seen for years. John stopped coming with us on expeditions up the stronghold, and settled down in his home village some kilometres back. While we were sad, he was gone, Jack was very motivating. He was pleasant to be around and seemed fascinated with this entire expedition. We didn’t really understand why, until a few weeks in when he started hearing things that weren’t there.”

  
“What kind of things?” Mileasia replies

“Whispers” Jil continues. “He swore he could hear something talking to him, calling him ‘my child’ and other things. We told him to go back and let us continue the mission, as we just assumed, he had touched an artefact or something, but he urged us to continue, assuring us he was okay.”

Jil sits down on her bench, Mileasia had already done the same. She tries to get her head around what is going on.

“We found a lot of different artefacts in the stronghold, but it wasn’t enough for Jack. He kept talking about a ‘castle’ or ‘king’ that was still in the area. We didn’t really know what he was going on about until we had finished our mission. We had a very good idea of what had happened, and were recording our findings in the shack on the base of the mountain. The dwarves had left in a hurry, and their king had become consumed with pleasing a dragon”

  
“Dragon? I saw no dragons in the area” Mileasia interrupts. 

“Yes,” Jil says. "There would be no mention of this in any books of the time. Most of this we got from diaries found here and stories of dwarves in this area. Any and all dragons are free game for dwarves. If you were to fall a dragon, and extract its flame gland, you would have unlimited dragon-fire at your fingertips. You would not only become the most powerful dwarf of your generation, your weapons would be practically indestructible. Have you ever fought against dragonfire weapons? I can assure you, you have no chance."

Mileasia sits back. If she smoked, she would be having one right now. As it stands, she can only huddle up in her cloak and listen. She starts thinking about Gerdam, and how she would have liked to hear this story. Dragons are one of her favourite animals, and always fill her with excitement

"The dwarven king was a kind man," continued Jil. "Regularly coming to this stronghold in order to talk to it. Dragons can shapeshift after all, and this particular dragon took the form of a short human man. The king's visits became more and more frequent, eventually leading to permanent residence. He would not leave, only wanting to scale the mountainside and visit the dragon." She clears her throat. 

Orcs normally don't talk for very long, as their language consists mostly of gruning, but Mileasia has found a particularly chatty one. Jil is using common speech to talk to Mileasia, as Mileasia does not speak Orc and Jil does not speak Elven. 

Humans may be crude, but they are versatile and very inclusive, their language confirms it. 

"One day, the king ordered his people to start extracting gold. Gold is all but useless to dwarves, but dragons adore it. They either melt it down to place on their bodies or consume it. The king wanted to make an offering to the dragon, to gain its respect. After a year, a gigantic statue of the king was made on top of the stronghold and unveiled for the dragon. Impressed at the offering, and all the company the king gave, the dragon fell in love."

Mileasia was shocked. "Dragons can love magical beings?" She asked. "I thought they only loved other dragons".

"Dragons are reclusive, yes." Jil answers" But according to legend, they descend from old humans who experimented with flying magic. That would mean they can technically be with anybody. I don't know how true the tale is, but this one certainly had a human appearance. If I had my notebook I would show you a few drawings of him. For now, just believe me"

"I do Jil.” Mileasia looks at her cellmate. She’s broken many criminals in her fortress back home, she can spot a lie from a mile away. “I know a liar when I hear one, and you are certainly not lying to me." Replies Mileasia

"Thank you." Jil sits up. "The dragon and king were inseparable. Both would disappear for weeks at a time, flying around to places or simply talking. The dragon was old and had many stories. The king fell out of favour with the dwarven hierarchy after a while, and a new king was elected back in the capital. But the ex-king didn't care."

"One day.” Jil continues “The dragon flew away, and the king came back down from the mountains, depressed. The dragon had stated that it was impossible to live like this, as dwarves are mortal beings, and he would live for at least another 10 thousand years. He had to 'apply the brand as the iron is hot'. I think that is how the saying goes.”   
  
“It is not” Mileasia thinks   
  
“He flew away before they could continue their relationship. The king was distraught, not leaving his bedroom for weeks."

Mileasia looks up at the window. Weeks? She could barely spend a few minutes in the same house, let alone weeks.

"The king received no visitors, barring one time when a powerful elven mage teleported into the stronghold, unannounced, and demanded to speak to whomever was in charge. Since the ex-king was in no state, he sent his second-in-command, the production manager. The mage and the production manager spoke, and the ex-king just listened. Apparently, there was a necromancer in the area, and while no dwarf had seen any necromancers nearby, the mage left with a message."

"Do not approach this man. He has been avoiding us for a milenia. If you see him, report him. We will be there within the minute"

Mileasia thinks she knows what will happen next, but lets Jil continue anyway

"The ex-king" says Jil. "Became hung up on these words. If he could live for a milenia, the dragon would return."

"Oh no" says Mileasia

"He studied in private." Jil continued. "Spending months and years on this project. He bought and read every book on necromancy he could find. He started inviting dwarves into his room for rituals. Disappearances started happening around the stronghold. Dwarves would leave on missions and never return. Production halted, nobody suspected it was nefarious arts. But then the mage's guild returned. They had sensed necromancy in the area, thinking it was the man they were looking for, they instead found the king and his obsession. Not what they were looking for, but still just as illegal, they chased the ex-king out of the stronghold and up the mountain, to one of the openings that the dwarves had made to extract minerals. There, they blasted him with electricity, resulting in an explosion that shook the mountainside. The ex-king died that day and the rocks to the entrance of the cave crushed his bones into dust."

Mileasia stands up. "I feel like this isn't the end of the story" she says after a pause.

Jil stands up too. "No. The king came back. His rituals had worked. With his new powers he retreated into the mountain. He already had some dwarven ghouls with him, but now in death, he was stronger. He was able to control dwarves after they died to do his bidding, becoming his mindless ghoul slaves. His powers are so great, that he can even call out to dwarves that are closeby to his domain, egging them to come explore, where he lies waiting. He gets his life force that way, but like all necromancers, he needs magic to survive. Any and all disappearances in the area are because of him. He is the king of these mountains. Dwarves going missing? They were captured by his minions. Mages being killed? Bodies un-found? There are entrances to his lair which haven't been discovered. He is powerful, able to enter the minds of dwarves and pull them towards the mountains, especially if they have weak wills. Like Jack"

"Jack is a human" replies Jil, puzzled. 

"Jack has dwarven blood in him. Have you seen how short he is? I assume it is some ancestor" Jil says, shaking her head. "The mountain king promised Jack riches beyond his wildest dreams if he could bring him more people to consume. A week ago he brought Mary, Bob and I to the entrance. We had finished our findings and were curious if there was anything else. We didn't think Jack was crazy evil, just crazy excited about history. When we arrived, we were suddenly ambushed by 2 dwarves from nowhere, plus Jack. He had this liquid on his blade, I don't know how he made it. He stabbed Bob and Mary tried to escape, but the dwarven ghouls predicted her blink and caught her when she reappeared. I tried to run, but Jack shot me with an arrow. When I woke up, I was in here and Bob was where you are. We were bound, unable to leave or do anything. A few hours later, Jack banged on the door. He told us he was sorry, and that we were serving a greater purpose. Bob called him a filthy pig - it sounds a lot worse in Orcish. Jack told us about the king, and how he needed bodies to fuel himself. Jack said he would be back tomorrow, and how much it was an honour to serve with us."

Jil looks down at her wrists. 

"Every day they come when you sleep" says Jil. Her voice starts choking up. "A disgustingly bloated dwarf touches your bonds. It then swells up in size and leaves. You can't move or speak, if you try anything, they hold you down. One slices your throat open, the other drinks what comes out.". 

Mileasia no longer wonders why her cell is empty

"I am sorry Jil." She says. "I will try to break us out"

"Don't bother" replies Jil. Her voice breaking. "It's hopeless. We are suspended off the ground. They are levitated up here. We can't use magic and these bonds are impossible to remove. We aren't the first people to be here. We won't be the last."

Mileasia jumps up to the window again. She has never seen an orc cry before.

"Jil" Mileasia says. "My friend is a dwarf. What might be happening to her?" 

"She will be getting turned into a slave about now. They bring all dwarves before the king in his hollowed-out mountain castle. I am sorry" she says. "There is no way she gets out".

"How long have I been asleep for?" Mileasia asks. 

"About 2 hours according to Jack." Says Jil. " He levitated himself up and put you in this cell himself. You woke up about 5 minutes after he put you down"

Mileasia looks at Jil. 

"Jil. How powerful is the king's influence?" She asks.

"Any dwarf can hear him if they're close." She says. “If he touches them, or makes eye contact, he can force them to kill themselves, which lets him control them."

Mileasia starts "Jil, is there a window in your room?"

Jil looks up. “There is. It’s big enough to put my hand through. It’s how we’re getting breathable air in here”

“What can you see?” Mileasia asks

Jil replies “most of the castle. I can see the 4 battlements and courtyard, plus the main tower where the king usually resides” Jil turns around “I can also see several dwarves in the courtyard, your friend must be there, about to be given to the king.”

Mileasia smiles and looks up. “I could not be happier to be sharing a cell with an orc. Jil my new friend, please tell me you studied the javelin at high school”.

  
  


Gerdam feels ill, it’s not often people get the better of her. She should have thrown that bastard human off the peak of the tower when she had a chance. She thinks about how every human is traitorous scum and how the world would be a better place if she was allowed to eradicate them, but then she thinks of the time a human girl gave her a bite of her sandwich, so she decides to forgive them all. For now.

She forces her eyes open and looks around herself. She’s inside a courtyard of some sort, the walls are light grey, with battlements above them that have guards looking down on them. The walls look to be made mostly of refined rock. The smoothing techniques are definitely dwarven, and the height of the stairways and walkways seem to confirm that. She’s been in enough castles to recognize what a main courtyard looks like. The ground is smooth and soft, which is strange for something that looks black and metallic. There’s no grass, only a wide open space with several black walkways between the grey leading off from the main walkways, that surround pillars in a square fashion, spaced out evenly every few meters. Gerdam sees that the courtyard, despite being quite large, is decently well maintained. 

The main thing Gerdam notices is that the pillars are about 20m tall, and made of pure gold. 

The pillars go high into the sky, and as she looks up, she notices a metal box just dangling off to the side. 3 more identical boxes are swaying above all the battlements of this castle. 

On either side of her are two dwarves, with armour that predates the dwarven metal era, which means their brown armour is probably very heavy. The dwarves that are holding her arms and dragging her across the ground are walking slowly, with their footsteps making very little sound as they step on the black soft walkway. They both have longswords in sheaths on their backs and are looking straight ahead, marching in unison. Gerdam looks in front of her, and suddenly realises what situation she’s in. In front of her, going up from the black walkway, is a grey staircase. The staircase leads up to the middle of a bridge which links the walls from each side of the courtyard together. In the middle of the grey bridge is an altar and a throne. The altar is a massive golden archway with designs of a human face on either side on it, the same human face repeated over and over with a dragon’s head in the center part of the altar’s archway. Underneath the archway is a white pedestal, large enough for a small human to lie on. Or a normal dwarf. 

In the throne next to the altar is a dwarf, one that seems different than all the other dwarves surrounding her. The dwarf in the throne is old, older than any other dwarf Gerdam has seen before in her life. The face has wrinkles drawn all over it, with blemishes and moles scattered everywhere. The eyes are hollow and vacant, with bags under them like they hadn’t slept in a century. Both the head hair and beard hair are short and grey, which is very unusual for a dwarf, as they normally like their hair to be long. The dwarf’s mouth is dry and clearly is lacking blood. The clothes are old, falling apart and dull. All the colour has clearly faded from them, and there are patches of cloth that have been sewn on by someone who clearly has never sewn in their life. The dwarf would look like a peasant, if it weren’t for the crown on top of the head. The crown is magnificent, just from a glance Gerdam knows that it’s of immense quality. The crown is fully golden and adorned with jewels, each one brighter than the last, with one “crown jewel” in the very centre which is made of magnidium, a type of jewel made from the very pits of lava lakes, lakes that are nearly as hot as dragonfire, and therefore only a dragon could find. The dwarven king’s face is twisted into a smile of sorts, yet it’s not malevolent. More in the shape of a host welcoming its guest. Flanked on both sides a few meters away are two tall dwarves, holding halberds and wearing more modern looking armour, but still a few hundred years old. 

The dwarf king lowers his gaze and opens his eyes wider. Gerdam doesn’t seem to be affected with what the king’s trying to do. She opens her mouth and spits, a black liquid mixed with saliva and blood shoots out and lands in front of them.

“Funny” the dwarven king says. 

Gerdam frowns, the king’s voice is hollow and empty. His dwarvish is ancient, which she expected. It sounds like the colour black, which Gerdam finds odd considering she cannot hear colour. 

“What’s so fuckin’ funny?” She replies

“You do not hear my voice.” the king continues, closing his eyes. “You are either not a dwarf, or you have been given something powerful”. The king looks to his right and clicks his mouth. “aide, check her” 

“Sir” a voice says in the common tongue. “She has been checked fully, there is nothing else on her”

“Check her again” says the king, this time in the common tongue. It sounds like he skipped pronunciation classes at high school with how heavy his dwarven accent is. Every word is pronounced painfully, like they get stuck in his throat before they come out. 

Jack’s face appears from behind the throne and walks down the stairway towards Gerdam. His face is the same as it was before, but infinitely more punchable according to Gerdam. His clothes have changed too, instead of a typical white fur coat, he is wearing black leather clothes and boots, most likely the clothes that were beneath the fur. He struts over to Gerdam and starts patting her down.    
“You sick fucking wanker” Gerdam starts. “You used us. If I find out that ya touched a single strand of hair on my friend’s head, I’ll tear ya nuts off and feed them to ya mum for breakie” 

Jack’s eyes open wider. “Vivid, but not unwarranted. You are right to hate me, I did use you. But listen to me love, you won’t remember a thing about this tomorrow. Mostly cause you’ll be dead, so let’s keep your last few hours with a bit of civility won’t you?”

“Yeah why don’t ye go choke on my unshaven ass hairs ae, ‘love’” Gerdam replies in a mocking tone. “And if you’re trying to cop a feel I’ll bash your skull in with my bare hands”

Jack says nothing and keeps feeling down Gerdam. Before turning back and shouting “she’s clean!” 

The king looks pensive for a few seconds. Muttering to himself in dwarven. “Where oh where would I hide something powerful where no one would look?”. His eyes shoot open. “Aide, check her beard”.

“I’ll bite your fucking fingers off Jack, don’t even think about it” Gerdam says, bearing her teeth

“I don’t doubt it” Jack says. “Guards, hold her head”

Gerdam yells obscene profanity for the next few seconds and Jack rummages around in her beard, before eventually resigning herself to screams. Jack pulls out his hand and looks at what he found

“What have you found?” The king says

“Some sort of blue earring?” Jack replies, turning it over. “It looks elven” 

“Mileasia” Gerdam thinks. 

“Oh, your elven friend?” The king says, looking at Gerdam. His face has changed, the gem in his crown is flaming and his eyes share the same fire. “I wonder when she placed that on you?”

Mileasia’s earring holds powerful protection magic, able to stop some of the most advanced mind spells in existence. Considering her ties to her elven government, were her mind to be invaded, she would spill powerful secrets about her leaders. All crownguard members have these earrings to protect themselves from such magic, and Mileasia ripped hers out to protect Gerdam at the last second, while they were being dragged away. 

“No matter” the king continues. He holds out his hand and points towards her. “Now,  **come”**

Gerdam is lost. Her surroundings are black and she feels like she’s swimming in a pool of darkness. The sky is black, with dots of white scattered at random. “The stars are so beautiful tonight” she thinks, as she reaches out to grab one of the white dots. It jumps away from her and flies off into the distance. Gerdam walks after it, climbing up a staircase of black matter. She finishes climbing up and clasps the star in her hand. Smiling, she opens her hand and looks down. The star is resting there, shining in her hands. “I’m so tired right now, I think I’ll lay down” she says, yawning and falling over. Resting her head on the ground before closing her eyes.

“Good”. The king says, looking at Gerdam lying on the altar, eyes closed, hands to her sides. “Bring my knife”.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Not very often do we see her, her hair as smooth as silk** _

_**Eyes as beautiful as lakes, smile as sweet as milk** _

**_We talk of her like she is gone, but she is ever here_ **

_**We see her beauty and splendour but once, o death, always near** _

The castle is massive. Spanning a few hundred metres in both length and width, built in a typical square pattern. It is made up of many different rooms, housing roughly 300 occupants, plus the king himself. It is made up of 4 circular battlements on each corner, all connected to each other by stone walls. In between the two back battlements, there is a gigantic tower, bigger than the others. This tower holds the king and his private chambers, consisting of a gigantic library, a bedroom, a study and a valuable room, on the 4 floors respectively. 

Most of the “residents” live inside the walls. While the residents are dead, they aren’t fully mindless slaves. All of them will obey their master without question, but still retain some personality they had before they died. In these walls there are entertainment halls, libraries, bedrooms, halls for music, rooms for resting and most importantly, rooms for training. The life of a ghoul is not a fun one, as while rest is important, you don’t need to eat or drink. You just go about your day following your master’s orders, and try to keep your head down and relax only when you’ve finished with everything you need to do. Talking to others is normal, as being bored while working is quite common. It was just during this time that two dwarven ghouls are talking to each other right outside the common room.

“Ey Dorg, how’s the weather?” Says the first dwarf

  
“I wouldn’t know,” replies Dorg. “We live in a fucking mountain mate, for all I know it’s pissing down”

“Oh right” says the first dwarf. "Hey did ya see the bossman got himself a new slave? They're doing the whole stabby sacrifice thing in a few minutes"

"Gandem, I don't know what gave you the idea that we're friends, but just because we're enslaved together for eternity doesn't mean you can talk to me like we're buddies" Dorg replies, looking away while polishing his spear

"You're always like this!" Gandem says angrily "whenever I think we're getting somewhere you always shut me out. Could you not be an arse for like 5 minutes?

"Oh I'm the arse?" Dorg says, turning around. "Remember when you decided to take us on that wonderful camping trip up the mountains, and when we got attacked the FIRST thing you did was scream and leave me to die"

"How many times…" Gandem starts. "I was running to get help!"

"WE WERE ON THE SIDE OF A BLOODY MOUNTAIN, WHAT HELP?" Dorg bangs his spear on the ground "D'YA THINK A BUNCH OF FARMERS WERE GONNA BE LIKE 'oh yeah howdoyado let us help you get to a nice warm bed and a cuppa tea while we deal with all these ghouls'. Jog the hell on Gandem, I died cause of you"

Gandem looks down into the courtyard where the ceremony is taking place. Another dwarf will soon be getting their life force sucked out of them before becoming yet another slave to the king

"At least my parents aren't cousins" Gandem says, under his breath

Dorg rams his spear through Gandem's chest

  
  


The king leans over Gerdam, knife in hand. Before him lies yet another slave to be added to the pile. The king can feel the amount of energy radiating off of the dwarf. For the first time in a while, he will have another super powerful slave ready for siphoning. This one seems particularly powerful, his human servant has done well.

"Excellent job human. You have outdone yourself this time. Your reward lies outside my quarters. Leave us, this is not something for your human eyes" the king says, with difficulty.

Jake bows before turning and walking up the steps. It's always a huge climb to the king's bedroom, but one that must be made.

The king looks again at the earring given to him. He has to hold it with his fingernails, as direct contact with skin seems to cause intense irritation, like it's actively rejecting the king's influence. It's pretty. The glow from the hundreds of torches around the castle and surrounding rockface reflects well off the blue from the earring. Were it a different time, perhaps he would have worn something similar.

He cuts Gerdam's bonds, feeling the power flow back into her body. Power which is about to receive. He holds the knife high into the air and starts to chant. He invokes his god, N'geth the demon of the dead. He invokes Ardem For, the demon of slavery and Podámena, the demon god of power. Dark mists surround him, as more and more of his dwarvenity is taken away from him in return for power. 

The knife turns black

The king holds Gerdam's head in his hand

The king looks at Gerdam's chest and aims carefully

A whistling sound is heard

The knife drops to the ground

The king looks down. He is currently on his knees, one of his hands is impaled to the ground. The object running through his hand is a crudely made spear, made of hardened blood. From the angle alone, the spear was thrown from a very high place. The king wonders “how did that strike me? No dwarf has aim that good. Nobody can throw that well from that far away. Nobody except…”

"Orcs…" the king growls.

"I think I hit him" the orc says, looking through the window from her cell. "I haven't thrown a spear since middle school. I'm surprised I hit him, I was aiming for his head"

Mileansia lies on the ground, face twisted in agony, blood coming out of her fingertips. The bands on her wrists hiss angrily, using magic while wearing magical inhibitors causes a lot of pain. Mileasia barely survived using her own blood as a catalyst for the spear, but she needed to save her friend, now it's up to her

Gerdam is feeling tired. She feels like she deserves a rest, after all, the climb up the stairs to reach the star was certainly difficult. For some reason, she can’t help thinking that she’s forgetting something. 

“Oh well, it mustn’t’ve been important”. 

She lies there, on the comfortable ground, eyes closed and thinks about things she likes. For some reason, she starts reminiscing on her time as a child. 

“Oh, the time I got my head stuck in Pete’s tractor and he turned it on. Man I was hollerin’ and he heard nothing. I had to walk around while he picked up hay for half a bloody hour. When he stopped and came out the poor bastard had a heart attack, he thought he had killed me. Still, it’s a good thing too. Cause if he hadn’t had that heart attack I would’ve killed him myself.”

  
“Oh! The time I ate 7 scoops of that human ice cream and didn’t realise the weirdos put artificial sweetener into it. I can’t believe I was allergic to that stuff, I was puking my guts out for days. Still, the ice cream was delicious so I can’t regret it that much”

She rolls over and looks up. The white stars shine brightly in her eyes as she remembers her friends and family back in Hollowsmouth 

“Barb, you crazy woman. You’re the main reason I joined the adventurer’s guild. The amount of times I’ve had my arse handed to me really tipped me off. It’s a shame they can’t find you anymore, I would’ve liked to fight you one last time”

“Mam, I forget sometimes the only reason you’re alive is because of me. Being infected like that with those wild spines really just puts a damper on the whole ‘giant spider hunt’. Still, I feel like losing your arm is slightly better than being consumed by a 30m tall plant monster. You still don’t really forgive me for lopping your arm off though. But else you would’ve died you dumb bastard”

“And the time I got myself in that wyvern’s den, oh god I was so scared. The huge bird was roosted on probably the biggest supply of oil I’ve ever seen. And our wyvern translator was useless! That’s the last time I ask humans to do anything honestly. The big bastard thought we were there to kill him! I remember being snatched up in those massive claws and flown out of that cave. Oh I thought I was gonna die, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hear a thing, I was just a doll in the claws of a flying death machine. And then…” 

She gasps for a second

“You were there next to me. You were flying, right alongside it. I’ve never seen anything move that fast, you stabbed the beast’s claws and it howled and let me go, right into the abyss. I was falling so fast and I had just got my breath back. Out of the frying pan and what not, but you grabbed me. You held me, cape whipping around you, hair flowing up in the air, hood blowing in the wind. And those piercing blue eyes, brighter than the sky, which I was falling out of. You held me and we slowly reached the ground, it was like we had fallen a metre from the impact that you made. Only a damn metre. You elves sure are something, risking your bloody life for a stranger. I never wanted to punch and kiss something so hard at the same time.”

She stops, where is she? She looks around for her, and next to her, she sees a blue star. Lying on the ground, a few centimetres away from her. 

She smiles   
“There you are Milly, I found you”

She looks down and grabs it, the star. This one looks slightly different from the others, it feels slightly different from the others. It’s like the darkness around her is being repelled by it. Strange. She reaches her arms out and clasps the stone in her hands.

Suddenly, she is ripped away from the darkness. From everything. She inhales and sits up, taking in everything around her. Guards are shouting and running over to her. The king is kneeling on the ground, something red sticking out of his hand. Jack’s nowhere to be seen. The king is looking up somewhere, up at this floating metal box a few hundred metres away. The box is just there… but she sees something inside it. Something moving.

“I know you’re there Mileasia, cheers”

As she is awoken, memories come flooding back to her. Memories of her life. Her friends. Her dreams. She remembers where she is and why she is currently surrounded by many guards. But not only her memories went back into her head. Something else went in too. When she was under the influence of the king, the king projected his emotions, fears, dreams and most importantly, memories onto her. 

She had visions of a bullied childhood. A gradual rise to the top of the workforce. A chance encounter with a rare mineral. Stardom. Knighting. Oath swearing. Kingship. Travel. Fortress. Dragon. Love. Abandonment. Hate. Grief. Death. Life. Castle. Followers. 

A name.

She looks up at the king and locks eyes with him. He knows she knows what he's thinking. 

Gerdam smiles and opens her mouth; "he's not even that pretty" she says, smugly smiling

The king roars at her

She jumps up and sprints down the stairs, she’s not going to fight the king now, she needs a weapon of some sort. She shoves the earring into her beard and lands on the ground hard. Guards surround her with an array of weapons, armours, helms and expressions. Some scared, some angry, some happy to be done with monotonous guard duty.    
“SEIZE HER” the king shouts, with guards trying to pry the spear from his hand. 

“You heard 'im” Gerdam says, widening her posture and bringing her fists up to her face. “Seize me”’

A spear is thrusted at her, she dodges it swiftly and grabs the shaft, pulling it, and the guard holding it, towards her. She lets go and punches the guard square in the face, hard, with a satisfying crack he falls to the ground limp as a ragdoll. She looks up and ducks to dodge a sword swipe aimed at her head. She falls to the ground and does an uppercut from a grounded position, before grabbing the helmet of the guard and pulling him down towards her waist, kneeing him in the face. A third and fourth guard rush in to strike, but Gerdam picks up the guard she was holding with both her hands and throws him into the other two, with all three of them falling down with clangs and shouts. She spins and rolls under a club aimed at her and starts to run towards the indoors. 

  
“Where the hell are my weapons?” she shouts. Missing her plethora of knives already. 

She scans the faces of the guards running across the battlements and roadways, knowing she might get a reaction. One guard stops running and looks to his right, before continuing running towards her. 

“Bingo”. 

  
She rolls under an arrow aimed at her and speeds up, sprinting full force towards the wall with several guards pouring out of it like toothpaste. She seems to get the feeling that they don’t want her there. Too bad

She jumps and spins over a blade aimed at her legs and steps on the arm of the guard holding it, slamming him to the ground. While she has her foot on his hand, he looks at him in the eyes, grabs his head and shoves his face into her knee, parting the head in two. He slumps to the ground and she picks up his sword. She turns and faces the next 5 guards facing her, barring her path. She throws the sword between her left and right hands, balancing the weight. She decides that her fists would probably do more damage than this, so she flips it over and holds it like a throwing knife. She flings it at the head of one of the guards. She brings up her heavy square shield to block the sword, as it lands in it with a strong thunk. She looks up over her shield and sees Gerdam running towards her. She turns slightly and shifts all her weight into her shoulder, charging into the shield and ramming the guard into the ground. She grabs the handle of the sword, still stuck in the shield and picks it up, flipping the shield over her head and slamming it down on two other guards in her way. She turns around and does a few quick jabs to one of the guards. The guard tries to grab her beard but she grabs his arm and breaks his hand backwards, pushing it into his face. She spins around and grabs the arm of a guard trying to stab her with his spear. With the spear now between her back and arm, she locks her elbow around it and spins again, flipping the guard over her shoulder. A few guards back away from her in fear, as she pants and looks up at them.

“Why haven’t you idiots used magic yet?” she asks them. Dead cold faces surround her, yet still seem to have a little bit of life in them

“Oh, I get it. Your king holds all your magic right? Well that makes things a lot easier” She grins, holding her shoulder and twisting her arm around. 

She breathes in and lets the magic fill her body, her heart and her soul. She closes her eyes and envisions the spell. Dwarves aren’t the best with magic after all, that’s more elf’s territory. But she knows all the same how good she is with destruction magic, better than Mileasia even. 

She opens her eyes and rushes forwards. Any basic magic user would cast “null” right now. Her fist is glowing, her eyes are aflame and she’s a very easy target to hit. But these sods can’t use magic. 

  
It was like a train had just passed through. The guards fell with such a strong explosion forcing many of them to fly backwards in many different directions. The poor guard Gerdam punched was practically gone, with only smoking boots to signal where he was. The strength of the shockwave had blown the foundation of the castle walls out, with loose bricks falling and part of the inside now being visible from the outside. 

With the guards in front of her all taken care of, she runs indoors and up the spiral staircase. She looks to her right and left, trying to figure out what room they could be in. She looks at the partially destroyed wall next to her and down into the courtyard. Guards are already rushing over, trying to help up the guards that were still “alive”. I suppose alive isn’t the best word. “Moving” would be more accurate. 

She picks a direction and runs, trying the doors as she goes. Most are empty, with some being chambers. Others being book rooms. Some having other weapons, but not hers. 

“Come on come on I can’t keep looking forever” She says, trying yet another door.

As she goes inside she sees an interesting sight. Two dwarven guards were in the room. One of them has a spear through his abdomen, an axe in his shoulder. A few daggers in his back and a sword in his foot. The other dwarf has a sickle in his head, a trident in his chest, two swords juttering through his stomach and a knife in his back thigh.

They were also making out

“Uh” Gerdam starts. “Do you know where the weapons we take from the prisoners are?”   
One dwarf points to his right. “Third door on the left”   
“Thanks” Gerdam says. Closing the door

“Who was that?” one of the dwarves asks

“No idea Dorg” says the other. 

They resume.

Gerdam breaks open the door and sends debris everywhere. The guards on duty inside the room are playing a card game of sorts, looks to be with elvish cards. They stare at Gerdam before standing up and try to get ready.

“Look, we already know how this song and dance is going to end. So why don’t you stay sitting down and let me just…” Gerdam gets interrupted by one of the guards lunging at her.

She sighs, steps backwards and lets her foot out. The guard trips over and starts to fall, and Gerdam uses his falling momentum to push him into the ground and draw his sword simultaneously. The other guard tries the same, but she simply springs out of the way and pushes the guard down too. The guard falls on top of the other, and Gerdam lifts the sword she drew up in the air and slams it down, piercing the guards like a kebab.

“SHIT” one of the guards screams. “GOB! GET THE HELL OFF ME” 

“WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M TRYING TO DO MARDIE?” He screams back. “I CAN’T FEKKING MOVE” 

“These guards really haven’t been trained very well” - Gerdam thinks to herself, before going farther inside the room. 

She sees a row of chests, with dates and names on them. The chest on the bottom row looks to have the least amount of dust on it, so she pulls it out and tries to unlock it. The padlock doesn’t budge so she puts her finger in the lock and coughs, blasting the padlock into pieces. She throws open the chest and looks inside. 

“Oh there you are” she exclaims. “Come to mummy”

The king stands up, rubbing his hand. The wound caused by the spear has already been sealed by his magic. One of his personal guards is bowing towards him.    
“Orders, sire?” She says.

The king looks up at his castle. “Everything I’ve made” he starts, “could all be destroyed in an instant. I can’t let this happen.”   
He turns towards his guard. She stands there, taller than him, face and body covered by expensive diamond plated armour. She holds a lance with a red and white flag tied around the metal point. The 3 other guards stand a few metres behind her, looking straight ahead in identical armour, but with different weapons. One has a longsword. One has a mace. One has a katana.

“Defend the room” the king mutters solemnly. “Do not let her get in. I will return, I need to get my armour”. 

He starts walking up the stairs, back towards his chambers. He turns around and looks into the window where Gerdam is. He sees her leap out the window and onto the courtyard below, slamming 2 of his soldiers as she does. 

He climbs the stairs slightly faster

Gerdam is ecstatic, it’s been a long time since she’s had this many enemies to fight at once. She swings her club around her head and slams it onto guard after guard. They are putting up a decent fight, if she doesn’t destroy their bone structure with her attacks they simply get up again after a few moments. Even the guards she put down earlier have already risen back up, albeit in a very heavily weakened state. She looks up towards the metal box where her friend is in. 

“Now how the hell am I going to get up there?” she wonders aloud. The box is clearly over a hundred metres away, meaning that she will either need a staircase or levitation magic, and since she is unable to obtain either of them, she begins to brainstorm. 

She hears clangs behind her and turns around quickly. A very tall guard is rushing her now with a large spear. He’s brandishing it like he’s about to throw it, but with both hands on it. She slides to the right and dodges the initial jab and ducks under the second one. She then jumps backwards for the third jab and holds her club over her head. The guard suddenly stops and looks up at the club coming down towards him. Unable to dodge in time, the guard tries to jump backwards but doesn’t make it. The resulting slam of the club making contact with the ground causes a huge explosion and sends things everywhere. Including the guard, several metres into the air, well above the highest point of the castle. Before reaching the apex for a moment and crashing down. This gives her an idea.

Gerdam spins the club in her hands and starts channelling magic, imbuing the club she holds with a fiery red colour. She looks up at the box in the sky and squints. “Yep, I’m fairly certain I’ll make it” she says, spinning the club over in her hands. She takes a deep breath and charges forwards. She sprints past a few guards too slow to keep up with her. Several guards in front of her hold out their hands to try and stop her, but she shrugs them off like she’s playing a game of rugby. She sprints towards the castle wall and jumps, throwing her body several metres into the air. She then flips, doing a full 360 roll in the air and slams her club down on the battlements, and releases all the magical energy stored in the club into the wall creating a huge shockwave, blasting herself and everyone around her nearly a hundred metres away. Yet sending herself straight upwards, pirouetting in the air to adjust her flight course and landing right on top of the box.

THUD   
  
“What was that?” Jil says, worried. She looks at the ceiling and the sounds of footsteps on it, running around it, trying to find a way in. Suddenly a head pops down, and looks in the window. Jil screams for a second, and then looks at the face.

“Good evening ma’am” Gerdam says. “Can Mileasia come out to play?”

“Gerdam!” Mileasia shouts from the other room. “I can not believe you are here. Please get me out.”

“Sure thing!” Gerdam replies. “You might wanna step a wee bit back eh?”

  
Gerdam pulls herself back up, and walks over to where the door is. She lifts the club over her head and holds it there for a second, she adjusts her feet and then slams down, right into the door of the cell. The door rockets back at absurdly high speeds and breaks through the other side of the wall. The door and the wall crash into each other and fly backwards, and start tumbling towards the ground. Gerdam jumps in and lands with a smile. 

“What’d I miss?” She asks triumphantly. Before seeing the state of Mileasia and running over to help her.

“What happened? Did those bastards do this to you? Tell me you’re fine” she pleads, kneeling on the ground next to her friend.

“I am fine Gerdam, please. Remove my bonds, we shall leave this place” Mileasia says.

“You’re bleedin’ everywhere'' Gerdam replies, pulling out one of her knives and starting to cut Mileasia’s bonds. “How the hell do you expect me to believe you’re alright?”

“Gerdam. Do not worry about me. When you return my power I shall heal myself. I needed to use my blood.” She looks into Gerdam’s eyes. “Besides, you know this is not the worst thing that has happened to me” 

Gerdam pauses the cutting for a second, before resuming, albeit slightly faster. “So what’s the plan then? You have any ideas?”

  
“The plan is simple, we must leave here. I do have my doubts about the king, so I have decided. We must kill him. My new friend Jil…” Mileasia looks and smiles at Jil, she smiles back “...and I have thought about this. Upon his death, he will most likely reincarnate at someplace nearby, you know how necromancers are. They like to mock death at every turn. After we defeat him, we need to quickly rush to his reincarnation device, it will most likely be shaped like a bowl… or more accurately… a womb. These things are indestructible if not in use, so if you hit something and it does not break, it will most likely be what we are looking for” 

Gerdam hesitates before continuing to cut away at the bonds. “Right, these necro’s are a bit odd aren’t they?” 

“The necromancers? Yes” Mileasia says. She sits up and lets Gerdam have an easier time cutting the bonds “I will explore the castle and try to find it. You need to help me Gerdam, I need you to cause a huge distraction, get as many of them as possible after you, and I will find the device where he births from. Once I have it, we will fight the king, kill him and then destroy the device as he births from it”

“Understood.” Gerdam finishes cutting through the bonds and lets them fall to the ground. 

Mileasia up until this point had been a wreck. Draining magic from elves is like removing limbs from humans, or shaving a dwarf, or de-tusking an orc. They’re still able to live, but it’s agony. Mileasia is a powerful elf, which is why she was selected for the Crownguard in the first place. It’s not often an elf is able to withstand such brutal torture, but this is not the first time she has been under the red rope. Most magical beings upon being tied up with this rope use magic, and find that casting a spell causes blood to leak from your orifices and fingernails, but it doesn’t fully “cancel” the spell. Obviously it’s impossible to cast magic if you’re deconcentrated, which is exactly why humans like to blast loud music during battles. If your enemy is disorientated, they are much easier to fight. However, the rope itself is simply a drainer. A relatively simple spell such as “flash freeze” isn’t difficult to do and it only takes a second of concentration to cast. Mileasia simply tried casting magic, causing more and more blood to leak out of her fingernails, and agony was the only thing on Mileasia’s mind. Once the blood was large enough, she casted flash freeze and handed it to Jil. Jil gave the spear points by grinding the “blood spear” against her tusk, until it was sharp and by her standards; penetrable. 

Mileasia was pale, cold and shivering. Barely able to speak, let alone sit up. Yet once the bonds fell off her hands, everything changed. It was like a sonic boom was let off inside the cell. She took in a deep breath, closed her eyes, felt the magic return to her body, and screamed.

The king walks down the stairs, donning his full armour. Black and red. Ironically the colour of dragonslayer armour. He is flanked on both sides by his 4 personal guards, walking beside him in tandem. Upon hearing the scream, he stops for a second and looks up at the box. A shiver runs up his spine, as he swallows and continues to walk down the steps.

Mileasia stands there, levitating a few centimetres off the ground. Her cape flaps wildly, despite the absence of wind. Her eyes start to glow, the magic is pouring back into her veins like blood. She feels powerful, she feels incredible. And she feels sad. She should have been able to block a simple surprise attack such as that one. She thought she could trust humans again, especially after what they had done before. And while Jack didn’t seem like a bad guy at the time, looking back, she should have been smarter. At least she protected Gerdam, if it wasn’t for her earring, who knows what could have happened?

She turns and looks at Gerdam, she is kneeling on the ground looking up at her, wonder in her eyes. She smiles and turns to look at Jil. She holds out her arm and swings it up, left, down, right. She turns her hand into a fist and punches forward, a rectangular section of the metal wall is blown backwards, big enough for an orc to walk through. Jil, surprised by the sudden surge of power walks forwards. She stands in front of Mileasia and Gerdam, easily towering over both of them. 

Mileasia steps back on the ground and bows forwards. 

“It is good to finally meet you, Jil”

Jil looks at both Gerdam and Mileasia, and bows back. 

“Likewise”

Gerdam, unwilling to be left out, stands up and does a curtsey. “Thank ya for keeping my friend company throughout all this Jil. And I must say, you got a bloody fantastic arm on you”

Jil starts to blush, the easiest way to compliment an orc? Tell them they’ve got great looking muscles. 

“Jil” Gerdam starts. “I can see you’re not one of those ‘fighting’ types are ya? Listen, do you think you could wait here a bit? I doubt they’ll come after ya, considering we’re the ones about to tear this place up”

Jil grunts in acknowledgement. Mileasia walks forwards towards the rectangle she blasted backwards and holds her hand on it, before closing her eyes for a second. After a brief flash, she holds out the newly created object and hands it to Jil.    
“I am aware it is cumbersome, but I feel a large hammer is a decent defence if they try and harm you. Please be safe Jil, if you need anything, scream. We shall try to assist.

Jil grunts again. Smiling. 

Gerdam turns to Mileasia, and reaches into her beard and holds out the earring. “Thank you Mileasia, I have to say, this helped out more than I expected”

Mileasia gasps, and smiles. “Here” she says, taking it and bending over towards Gerdam’s head. “If you do not have this close by you will be influenced. Please refrain from losing it, as I will want it back”. She pricks Gerdam’s ear and places the earring in the hole. Grinning, she stands up again.

“It looks great on you” Mileasia says. “Let us go”

“Come back soon, I’ll be waiting” Jil says.

Mileasia and Gerdam stand in the doorway, looking down at the castle below. There they can see the destruction Gerdam caused, with many guards preparing themselves while looking up at them. The king is in the middle, standing near the altar, holding a longsword of some sort. He doesn’t look very happy. They both turn their heads and look at Jil. Nod. Turn to each other, nod once more, and jump.

“Let’s make this quick” the king says. “I do not want them to be here when he arrives.”

“What makes you believe he will come today my lord?” One of his guards utters.

“Because he has to” replies the king. His voice low. “Or I will never see him again”

Gerdam hits the ground first, she lands on top of the entranceway into the castle. Despite the lack of food and the rocky surrounding area, the walls are still lit up with an orange glow from all the fires around the area. She looks down behind her, behind the castle and sees all the tunnels that were carved out by the dwarves in the area. She assumes some of them are still down in the mountain depths, perhaps bringing food for the king? Perhaps looking for more ‘volunteers’? Who knows. She turns around and looks forwards again, at the king, and his legion in front of him. She lifts her club in her hands and holds it like a baseball bat, bouncing it off her right hand and holding the base in her left. She smiles and whispers. “I give it 5 minutes before they overwhelm me. Please be quick Mileasia”, before jumping onto the courtyard below with a slam.

Suddenly the sky turns black, storm clouds loom above crackling with black electricity. She swears she can see shapes in the sky, swimming around. Shapes like dragons, lizards, snakes, bears. She can’t fully make out anything, but she knows it’s not good. Her vision feels foggier too, only able to see about 60m in front of her. It’s like a black fog has clouded her vision, she feels slightly faint, but understands when she sees the king at the very edge of the fog barrier, pointing his fingers at her.

“Oh I get it” she says out loud. “This would probably be a lot worse if I didn’t have this”. She points to the earring on her ear. “At least it’s keeping your pathetic necromancies at bay, with this on, ya can’t touch me for shit!”

A bolt of lightning strikes down from the sky, Gerdam rolls out of the way just in time before it lands, shattering the ground where she stood and leaving a black spot. 

“Well. I suppose you can”. 

Before her, many guards are at bay, with the king holding his hands out like puppet strings, and her world feeling like a bad dream, Gerdam feels strange, like something has changed. She rushes forwards to the closest guard and the king makes a pulling motion. Immediately, the guard flies backwards, avoiding Gerdam’s blow with the club, she slams empty space before her and debris flies into the air. The king then pushes his hands forwards, and the guard flies back at absurd speeds. Dropping her club momentarily, Gerdam pirouettes out of the way and draws one of her knives, slashing downwards at the guard’s arms, lopping both of them off entirely in one spin. She lands sideways on the guard’s chest and pushes herself off her, resheathing her knife as she does so. The guard falls to the ground and bounces one before remaining still. She lands next to her club and picks it up again. The king pauses for a second before turning his attention to a second guard ahead of Gerdam. The guard seems imbued with superdwarven strength, much tougher than before. He slams his sword down on Gerdam’s club, she blocks, but is still pushed backwards with the force of the blow. She regains her footing and spins, waving the club behind her. The guard jumps backwards, but Gerdam expected this. Instead of swinging, she throws her club forwards, slightly into the air. She rushes forwards, jumps, and slams the club down on the guard, who was expecting just a swing. 

As she looks up she comments “I see, so that’s it. You’re controlling them directly now, no wonder they feel like I’m beating up brick walls. Well, you’re gonna have to try harder than that” she turns her attention to the 4 dwarves in front of her, before rushing towards them to attack.

Mileasia lands a few seconds after Gerdam. She briefly casted a duplication and invisibility spell, causing a body double to land at the left hand side of the castle, whereas she herself lands on the right side. Without making a sound, she looks to the ground below. Gerdam has already started to walk forwards and gain the attention of most of the guard. She then looks towards the battlements and sees a few soldiers running towards Mileasia’s impact zone. 

“It appears they are on the lookout for myself as well. I shall try to remain undetected if I hope to find this device” she thinks to herself.

Mileasia starts running forwards, diving into the first staircase she finds. The invisibility spell only works for a few seconds, so upon reaching inside, the spell wears off. She jumps onto the ceiling and hides behind an archway of two rooms, she appears to be in a recreational room as weights, figurines, books and other assorted knick-knacks are strewn around like a kindergarten’s room. She hears noises and curls herself into a ball. Four guards run past and she overhears a small bit of conversation. Despite some difficulty, she manages to make out most of what they say. It’s in old dwarven, so a few words sound very strange, but she picks it up soon enough. 

“.... is really dangerous, if we don’t get her soon she’ll find it” one guard says

“I doubt it, we have guards everywhere looking for her, we know this place better than she does” another says

“Don’t you morons see the dwarf is just a distraction? We should honestly have more people running through here” the third one says 

“And let the dwarf solo the king? Have you ever seen a warrior that powerful? We need every dwarf possible protecting the king, I’m sure we can handle a slippery elf. Our armour is anti-mage anyway” the fourth one says confidently

“Yeah well we better hurry, the team that went to get her can’t find….” one starts, but runs out of earshot before Mileasia can finish listening to what they were saying. 

Mileasia jumps down and drops low, bending over, she holds her hands behind her and starts to run, conjuring a knife above her head in case any more guards come. She runs from room to room, unable to find any sign of what she needs. Considering the size of the castle, she expects it would be somewhere of some significance. Such as behind an elaborate door, or underground, yet in the first minute of looking, the two elegant doors she finds end up being quarters for the other dwarves. And the only underground passageway leads to mining carts. As she turns around, she notices a group of five dwarves hurrying down the stairs. She inhales, makes the knife disappear then jumps and tries to stick to the dark. 

“Hey! What’s that?” One of the dwarves says 

Right. Dwarves can see in the dark 

Before the group has a chance to ready themselves, Mileasia is upon them. She rushes into the middle of all of them and spins deftly, summoning two cleavers as she does so and removing the heads and fingers of two of the guards. She ducks down and rolls behind another guard, grabbing his head with her hand and casting a fast burning fire spell, melting his head in half a second. The other two guards try to spot her, but she is too quick. She jumps into the air and summons a barrage of arrows, which fly at the guard and pin him to the ground with overwhelming strength. The final guard looks terrified, or very happy. Mileasia cannot seem to figure out which, as it is quite dark. He rushes forwards and she summons a katana. She dashes forwards herself and unsheathes, slices and re-sheathes the sword, The guard stops, looks down, and falls to the ground with a thud, his lower torso now no longer attached to his body. As he looks at her, he yells “DOWN HERE” as loud as he can. Mileasia quickly runs back up the stairs as the guard tries to pull his lower body back onto himself. She does not want to wait and see if he can do it or not.

Gerdam is having a little bit of difficulty, as every enemy she fights, she has to slam into dust, otherwise they simply get back up again and continue to fight. With the energy of the king surging through the guards now, she cannot simply batter them aside and leave them, as they will get up after a few moments and attack her again. She has to decimate them, destroy them or otherwise eliminate them with powerful blasts or careful precise slashes with her knives. And the sheer numbers are taking their toll as well. She has already blasted around 40 or so of them, but they just keep coming. So she decides to try something different. 

She rushes forwards, sprinting past the many guards that stand in her way. She ducks under swipes, rolls past stabs and blocks arrows from afar and heads directly for the king. The king opens his eyes in shock and makes a sweeping motion with his hand. Suddenly, all the guards in the courtyard drop to the ground, lifeless. Like their puppet strings had just been severed. The king draws his sword from the sheath and holds it up sideways above his head. Gerdam jumps into the air and screams, holding her club above her head and slamming it down like a hammer. The king’s sword shoots out black energy and doubles in length, blocking the blow with ease and causing a resounding bang. The king doesn’t even falter, as Gerdam is propelled backwards at full speed, skidding along the courtyard ground and slamming into one of the monoliths. She lies there for a second and coughs, spits out blood and saliva and steadies herself again. She looks at the courtyard again and notices the change. 

The king has killed most of his guards in the area. Some are still alive on the outskirts and battlements, but it appears the king has ended lives in order to power up his sword. And, as Gerdam sees, his body is literally smoking with black energy. It radiates off him like a bonfire. The fog around the castle appears to have gotten thicker, with clouds now regularly shooting lightning onto the courtyard below. Except this time at random. The remaining guards look hesitant to continue fighting, as the king starts to walk forwards at Gerdam, his royal guard flanking him on all sides, readying their weapons and glaring straight into Gerdam’s soul. 

“Mileasia, I may need some help here” Gerdam says, before readying her club in front of her face and inhaling. “I don’t think I can take this wanker and his posse by meself.”

The king looks sombre. His black attire cannot hide his expression, which is that of pure grimness. It almost looks like he is in pain. Which is odd, normally necromancers feel good when they sacrifice lives to become stronger. It was almost like

“Oi kingsy, do you actually care for these lackeys?” Gerdam shouts towards the king, hiding her fear with her anger

“You have killed enough of my children for one day” the king replies, bringing his sword up to his face. “They were free of worry, free of pain, free of sin. My children revered me, and you forced my hand” 

Gerdam looks taken aback. “They didn’t have any life at all, you took that away from them!? Are ya daft?”

The king shoots a glare at Gerdam. “Their lives were meaningless before this! Full of pain and worry. I took that away from them. They live here, happy, with me. They had no regrets in death. But I do. I need to see him again. And if you leave, they will find me, and they will capture me, and I will never see him. You could never understand”

“Bleedin’ psycho, you’re such a selfish cock, taking hundreds of lives for your own gain. It’s not like he ever loved you, if he did, you’d be with him right now”

  
The king’s eyes widen and his face twists in anger. “HOW DARE YOU” The king shouts, and lunges forwards, sword pointed directly at Gerdam

Mileasia runs through the castle, getting progressively more and more worried. There is no sign of a ritual chamber and the rooms are starting to look very samey. Living room. Chambers. Recreational room. Band room. Storage room. Ore room. Room for weights. Room for training. Room for entertainment. Room for crying (?). Rushing forwards again, she reaches the corner of the hallway, around the corner she will be able to see the staircase leading up to the middle tower. As she rounds the corner, she sees twenty odd guards, standing in the hallway, looking around. One of the guards looks directly at her and looks surprised, before shouting “SHE’S HERE LADS” and readying his scythe. 

Mileasia isn’t ready to deal with this many dwarves, so she does the rational thing and runs back where she came. She hides behind the corner and waits, as five dwarves run past. Before they have a chance to react, she is upon them. She summons two fans and holds them in each hand, lunging forward like a dart and spinning in a counter-clockwise fashion, cutting the huddle of guards to ribbons. She lands with her arms outstretched and throws the fans at the other guards coming towards her. One guard knocks the fan out of the way but the other is too slow and the fan sticks into his face with a satisfying crunching sound. He falls back and another guard rushes to help him, slowly pulling the fan out of his face. She briefly inhales and summons a cloud, which she blows at the crowd before she stretches her hands out and pops it, causing smoke to flood the entire area. She jumps onto the ceiling and runs quickly, summoning two lit bombs and dropping them onto the ground. The guards trip and stumble over themselves until one of the guards reaches forwards and touches one of the bombs. He brings it closer to his face, looks closely, then opens his eyes and yells “GRENADE”. 

The resulting explosion shoots Mileasia forwards rapidly, over the remaining hallway guards and up the staircase leading to outside. She flips over the final guard as he swipes his sword at her. The blade cuts through her cloak and up her back, piercing her skin and making her fumble slightly. The cloak repairs itself instantly and her black leather skin suit tries to repair her injuries, but she cannot sit still and let it, as that would mean death. She lands and summons a shortsword and runs backwards up the staircase, fending off the attacking guard as she does so. Running backwards up a staircase is usually a very bad idea, but doing so while defending against a very aggressive guard with no regard for his own safety is an even worse one. She realises this quickly and throws the sword at the guard, he blocks and rushes her. She stops moving for a second and ducks to the ground, casting flash freeze and causing the stairs to become covered in a layer of ice. 

The guard fumbles, trying to regain his footing, but he is completely unable to do so and screams, falling as he does so. Mileasia breathes a sigh of relief and continues back up the staircase, towards the main chambers of the king. 

As she enters the middle tower, she sees the staircase that led out to the sacrificial altar below. On either side of the staircase are diverging spiral staircases, that lead to four separate floors. The one Mileasia is on now (second floor). The ground level floor, the third floor and a fourth floor which seems to be a library. She runs up the staircase and finds a room, locked with a wooden door. Surprisingly, the door is locked and flame magic does not open it. 

She looks through the keyhole and into the room, inside she sees an interesting sight. The room is full of dragon memorabilia. There are dragon books, statues, posters, bedsheets and even a dragon themed lava-lamp. Complete with fire particles. The other books are in a language Mileasia can’t understand, but it doesn’t seem to be a modern language. Looking in, she sees another door, with interesting writing on it. For some reason, her eye starts to feel cool when she looks at this door. 

“This is it” she exclaims. 

She turns around, she will find out how to break down the door later. She rushes down the staircase and towards Gerdam who is on the courtyard now, yelling something at the king. Unable to hear, she notices that the guards have lessened in number considerably. 

The king suddenly freezes up, Gerdam must have said something infuriating. Unsurprising. 

The king darts forwards with intense speed, Mileasia notices his black sword outstretched and heads towards Gerdam. Mileasia doubts that her club will be able to block an attack of that magnitude, so she quickly jumps into the air. As she does, she wraps her cloak tighter around herself and picks up at incredible speeds, like an arrow, she spins and flies, gaining massive amounts of velocity rapidly towards the king. 

  
Gerdam closes her eyes and holds out her club. She hears something she didn’t really want to hear. The sword easily penetrates her club, with exceptional ease, like it were made of butter. Unable to do anything about it, Gerdam looks down and sees the sword go into the club and out the other side, towards her stomach. She grimaces and braces herself. 

Suddenly a howl of wind reaches her ears, she looks up and sees Mileasia, knife between her teeth zoom towards her, she goes right past the king’s head and slides the blade across his neck, cutting it open in the process. She then slams into the ground with massive force, kicking up rocks, dust and other debris as she does so. The king screams and pulls his sword out of the club and fumbles backwards, trying to stop the torrent of blood coming out of his neck

“Nice to see you remain alive friend” Mileasia says, with difficulty, as most of her body is buried under rock

“You too, friend.” Gerdam replies. “I assume you found the chambers”

“I have” Mileasia replies, pulling herself out of the self-made crater. “I am also aware as to how a comet feels like”

  
“I wouldn’t be surprised. After we saw that bloody rock in the night sky all those years ago, you’ve been looking for an excuse to turn into one” Gerdam remarks, offering to help Mileasia up

“Oh quit it you” Mileasia stands up, ignoring Gerdam’s help while wobbling slightly. “Gerdam” she starts, in a low voice. “Are you okay?”   
  
Gerdam is standing, but with difficulty. The blow to the monolith was certainly not good, and apart from various cuts and scratches she received from other guards, it was a wonder she was still standing. 

“Not doing so great if I’ll be honest, but this is it. Cut open that wank-hole and we’re out of here.”   
  
“GUARDS, DEFEND ME”. While the rest of his guard rush the duo, the king grabs one of his royal guards and pulls off the helmet. The guard with the longsword. This guard has no hair, red eyes and he looks to be more human-like than dwarven. But suddenly his body, eyes, hair, ears and rest start to melt away, as the king holds his neck wound with one hand and the guard’s neck with the other. 

The guard drops to the ground, having his life force sucked away, as the king’s wound starts to heal up. 

Without sufficient time to react to this, the remaining 3 guards are upon them. Gerdam and Mileasia go into attack formation. Back to back, they begin to defend against the torrent of attacks.

Gerdam blocks the swipe of the lance guard, and tries to swing back, but the guard ducks backwards and the mace guard jumps off her back, swinging down with his mace at full speed. Gerdam tries to block, but the force of the mace slams the club, and subsequently Gerdam, off balance. She drops to the ground, but Mileasia rushes forwards and gets a few centimetres away from the guard’s face. She tries to throw shurikens out of her cloak, but the guard jumps backwards and blocks a few of them, with one of them impacting his armour and resting there. 

The katana guard is behind them, legs apart, arms bent forwards in a typical samurai position. The guard attacks, doing a vertical strike, then a diagonal one, then a horizontal sweep, all the while stepping forward. With each strike they get closer and Mileasia has more and more difficulty to dodge the attack. Left strike, high strike, low strike, thrust, spin strike, horizontal, horizontal, high strike, left strike. Mileasia barely has time to conjure a shortsword and block upwards before the katana slams down onto her sword and resonates through her body. She pushes the sword away and turns invisible. The katana guard stops, and closes his eyes. He waits a second, then shouts “there” in the common tongue, before stepping forwards and thrusting. Gerdam is already on it, and has lunged forwards with her knife and blocks the attack. Mileasia comes out of invisibility and goes to strike, but the lance guard rushes forward, jabbing wildly. Mileasia dodges backwards and parries the resulting attacks, while Gerdam tries to fight the katana guard. Before she can do so, however, the mace guard comes back, swinging his mace around his head and at Gerdam’s club. Gerdam ducks one blow and imbues her sword with magical energy. She swipes at the mace guard, but he parries one attack and dodges out of the way of another. Gerdam spins to block the katana guard’s attack and once the katana hits the sword, a small explosion happens, throwing the katana guard backwards with intense force. 

Mileasia dodges the lance again and again, flipping, ducking, parrying, feinting. But the lance guard is relentless. Poking again and again with immense force and speed, Mileasia is finding it hard to keep up. She decides to dash forwards, between the lancer guard’s legs. As she does so, the lance guard turns around and throws her lance, landing square into the leg of Mileasia. She screams out in pain and falls to the ground. The lance guard pulls out a short sword and runs at Mileasia. Unable to move, she tries to pull out the lance, but is unsuccessful. Gerdam yells and rushes towards Mileasia to help her, swinging her club into the air and slamming it on the ground, launching more debris into the air and the lance guard is forced backwards. She turns and yanks the lance out of Mileasia, and throws it at the lance guard. It pierces her shoulder and sends her flying backwards. The lance pins her against the wall briefly, but she grabs the lance and pulls it out of her, before readying it again. Mileasia tries to balance on the impaled leg, despite yelling out in pain. But she quickly jumps up and shifts her weight to her other leg. Gerdam and Mileasia stand next to each other as the three guards prepare to attack again. 

Gerdam swings her club around in a full circle pattern and Mileasia jumps onto it, she uses the momentum to fly into the air and pull out a large assortment of daggers. She throws them as hard as she can towards the mace guard, he blocks a few, but Gerdam suddenly stops spinning and rushes him down. He continues to block the daggers, but one hits his arm and it falls to his side, limp. Gerdam raises her club and slams it into the mace guard’s side, launching him off his feet and several metres into the air. While airborne, Mileasia changes her speed and flies forwards, slamming into the mace guard. She pulls out a knife and rams it into the neck of the mace guard. As he tries to take it out, Mileasia jumps off and lands back on the ground. The knife explodes and the mace guard’s armour is the only thing intact as the body hits the ground.

The katana guard launches his attack against Gerdam, but she blocks the first flurry of attacks. She swings her club at the guard and before he can react she throws the full club at him. He jumps over it and prepares to strike again, but Gerdam pulls out two of her knives and strikes the katana from either side, locking it in place. The katana user tries to pull back, but they are unable to move, as Gerdam’s grip is too strong. He lets go of his blade and pulls out a curved knife and swipes at Gerdam. It cuts along her cheek but she jumps back and throws one of her knives. The katana guard tries to deflect it, but the knife cuts through his armour on the side of his stomach. He falters briefly and Gerdam sees blood leaking from the wound. 

“Mileasia!” Gerdam shouts. “These guards are mortal! Or at the very least, they’re not undead!”

Mileasia looks up in surprise. The lance guard charges her, dashing forwards and out of reach for Mileasia’s normal short weapons. She flips over a strike and runs backwards, towards the wall of the castle. The lance guard chases her but Mileasia is faster. 

“Mortal you say?” Mileasia asks. She stops and turns around, a clicking sound is heard. The lance guard stops and looks down at her feet, she has stepped on a match. Mileasia smiles and looks at the guard, before a pentagon appears in the ground and blue fire burns away at the lance guard. She screams in pain, as the fire cooks her body inside her armour. Mileasia dashes forwards with a knife and slices the head clean off, watching as it falls to the ground with a thudding sound, before the body falls a few seconds after.

The katana guard looks at both the dwarf and elf, before steeling their resolve and putting one foot in front of the other. They run forwards, katana behind their head in a swiping pattern. Gerdam dives under them and runs towards her club. The guard turns around and several thudding sounds are heard. Many knives are protruding out of their back and they stand there in confused silence. Gerdam walks slowly towards the guard, still dumbstruck that the knives hit them. They look at Gerdam and say “I suppose you wonder why us mortal humans serve him”

Gerdam stops for a second. “I must admit, I do wonder”

The human takes their helmet off, and it falls to the ground. The katana guard looks at Gerdam with tears in their eyes. And blood all around their mouth

“He only wants dwarves, all other beings are useless to him. And ever so tasty”. 

Gerdam strikes the guard with all her might, knocking him at Mach speed into the wall, smashing it to bits as the guard’s body breaks apart. 

Mileasia looks at Gerdam and she looks back at her. Both of them inhale deeply and look at the king, wondering what he’s going to do. 

The king’s influence is clearly strong. Neither Gerdam nor Mileasia can see that far ahead of themselves, being affected by the necromancer’s blight, their vision is blurry, their bodies feel heavy (although that could just be the exhaustion from the fighting) and the sky shoots lighting at random intervals, thankfully away from most of the fighting, as the king most likely didn’t want to hit his guards by accident.

The remaining guards watch in horror. The king has never been defeated before. The king’s royal guard lie in pieces on the ground. The king himself is wounded, even the life force of a half-life isn’t enough to starve off certain death. The king raises his sword and charges at the duo. 

Mileasia steps to the side and Gerdam to the left. Dodging his attack effortlessly. The king turns and tries to rush combo Mileasia. She jumps, dodges and ducks, barely expending any energy as she easily dodges every attack the king can do. The king yells in anger and charges towards Gerdam. She too dodges, but also parries with her blades, stays out of range and receives no damage from the king at all. 

The king yells and bundles up his magical energy, the clouds shoot lightning into his arm and he reaches out and shoots it at Gerdam. She dodges out of the way and the ground next to her explodes massively. The king tries again at Mileasia, but she’s even faster, she rushes down the king and sticks a knife into his chest before he can fire. He pauses and falls backwards, and the lightning flies into the air, crashing against a rock face and blasting it to bits.

“You’re not a fighter, are you?” Gerdam asks, walking towards the king. 

The king yells again and tries to get more lightning. But Mileasia casts a protective barrier, and the lightning from the sky bounces back into the air, into the fog and against more rocks.

The king yells a third time and tries to swing his arms at Mileasia, but she simply grabs them and twists the knife in his chest. He screams out in pain and falls to the ground.

“You… my guards… my life…” he cries. The pain, the stress, the loss of his guard. It’s too much for him. 

“I will come back” he starts, looking up. “When I die, I will absorb the life force of every dwarf here. I’ll come back and be a hundred times harder to beat. You’ll never reach my reanimation device, it’s impossible to enter without a key.” 

“You will have no such luck king. Imagine what your dragon friend would say if he saw you now. In this pathetic state.” Mileasia looks angry. “How many lives have you destroyed for your own selfish desires? How are the dreams of these dwarves any less important than yours? What gives you that right to decide?”

The king looks at her, he reaches out with a hand now completely black and goes to touch Mileasia’s head. Gerdam rushes forwards and slices through his hand, it flies backwards and lands on the ground. 

The king laughs. “If I had your power, dwarf, I would have been unstoppable”

Gerdam looks down at the king. “Like you could’ve handled it. You would have wasted it, like everything else in your life.”

  
The king smiles, and turns into ash. 

Mileasia looks up, “I’d say we only have a few minutes before he’s reborn. I wasn’t able to get the door open, so we need to find a way in” she says, running forwards towards the stairway to the tower

Gerdam follows close behind “I’ll try smashing it, d’ya think that’ll work?” 

  
Mileasia replies “No, I have a better idea”

Both Mileasia and Gerdam reach the top of the tower in less than a minute, Gerdam looks inside the keyhole and sees the bedroom. The door on the other side of the bedroom however, is leaking black smoke and there appears to be loud sounds coming from the other side of the door inside the room. A shadow flies forwards at the keyhole and Gerdam jumps back in shock.    
“What the hell was that?” she asks, taken aback by the sudden spooky shadow face

“I do not know, but I know who would know”. Mileasia replies. She turns and rushes down the spiral staircase, and kicks down the door. 

Suddenly, a knife in the dark lunges at her, she dodges to the left and hits the assailant in the neck with a chop from her palm. The attacker falls to the ground and bashes his head against the floor. 

“Bleedin’ fuck lass, I can’t feel me legs, where the hell did ya hit me mate?” Jack says, clearly more upset that he bashed his nose against the ground than Mileasia is that he tried to kill her.

“I will do so much worse than this if you do not tell me what I want to know, human” Mileasia threatens, fire clearly in her eyes. She grabs Jack by the back of his hair and asks politely, “how do we enter the chambers of the king?”

Gerdam steps in. “I know the king gave you something, Jack. For serving me head on a platter. So you better talk, and fast, or I’ll be the one serving your head up for tea” she threatens

Jack looks taken aback. “The king never gave me anything of the sort, what are you on about? It was just some money for a job well done”

Gerdam slams his face into the ground and pulls it back up again. Mileasia, already having let go, searches Jack’s body. 

"You think me daft pinkskin?" Gerdam shouts. "I got beaten, stabbed, screamed at, poked, sliced and possessed cause of your antics you dimwit!" 

Jack looks up "yeah but, I didn't do those things to you… I don't know why you're cross with me"

He gets slammed down again

“I wonder how many people you’ve led to their deaths, human” Gerdam asks, holding Jack’s face in her hands. “I wonder how many lives your actions have ended”. 

"Nobody I swear! Just you, your friend, my 4 friends and a few passers by. That's hardly anybody" Jack says, with difficulty

Gerdam smashes his face on the ground a third time, with an audible crunch his nose bones shatter into a million pieces

"Should I off this wee sod?" Gerdam asks, looking at Jack

"My fucking nose!" Jack screams. Clearly not particularly worried about the murder threat by Gerdam

"I do not believe it is worth it. It feels shameful to kill a being as pathetic as this one, would you not agree?" Mileasia replies, still searching the body. She reaches into his back pants while doing so

“Found it” Mileasia says, pulling a key out of Jack’s pocket. “I wonder, what is a servant doing with the key to the chambers of a king?"

"Voodn't yu like t' bnow" Jack attempts, with a broken nose it is slightly difficult to speak properly. 

Gerdam looks at Mileasia "when the king entered my head, I could see more or less his thoughts. I had a small little history lesson in there, learnt a bit more about the king than I would like. I also learnt that he gets lonely sometimes" she says, looking at Mileasia. "Too lonely"

Mileasia looks up. "Is this human a top or a bottom?" 

Gerdam looks down. "A bottom" she replies

Mileasia summons a knife and flings it at Jack's neck, impaling it to the ground. Jack chokes for a few seconds, before expiring. 

As the two run up the stairs, Gerdam asks "how did you know he was down there?" While she runs

"I saw the door move open and the top of his head sticking out." Mileasia replies. "Once I saw that I came to the conclusion Jack was there, as the door slammed shut afterwards"

"Tosser" Gerdam scoffs. "Let's finish this, shall we?"

"Yes. Let us" Mileasia replies.

The two use the key to unlock the door. As they open it, a clicking sound is heard before small bursts of steam are released from either side of the door. They enter slowly and are immediately drowned in a torrent of energy. Unable to see each other, they blindly stumble across the room towards the respawner. There are black souls flying around the room like whisps and screaming can be heard from many locations. It smells like rot and bile with a tinge of fresh paint. 

Gerdam shouts "IS IT JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS DOOR?!" While looking at the door in front of her. 

"THIS IS THE ONE. LET US DO THIS QUICKLY" Mileasia replies.

Mileasia opens the door and it swings itself back, before the hinges are ripped off and the door flies backwards and smashes against the wall.

Inside the room is a machine, suspended from the ceiling. The metallic machine is attached to either wall with long pink tubes. The machine itself is in the shape of an oval, except despite being metallic, it pulsates like a heartbeat. The entire machine looks like it should be made of metal, but as Mileasia touches it, it feels warm and slimy. There is a bowl under the machine. A bowl large enough for a child to swim in, like a kiddie pool. This is plastic, and looks to be seperate from the machine. Black souls fly around the room and the screaming sounds like it's next to your head. Gerdam has to put her shirt over her mouth to breathe, Mileasia simply summons a white cloth to cover her mouth. 

At the bottom of the machine, a head is sticking out. A head with a barely formed skeletal structure and pitch black. The souls fly around the room before going into the top of the machine and into the body of the rebirthing king. 

The king looks at the two inside his room and screams. A high pitched scream, like that of a wraith. This scream shatters a glass on the table in the other room and both Mileasia and Gerdam cover their ears. 

Gerdam takes her club hard and slams it with all her might against one of the side cables, ripping it out of the wall and slamming it on the ground, causing a few bits of rock to fly into the air. 

Mileasia summons four knives and has them hover next to her friend. "GERDAM" Mileasia shouts. "TOUCH THE KNIVES, IMBUE THEM!". 

Gerdam touches the knives one by one, she closes her eyes before doing so, as it is hard to concentrate when the room smells like death

Mileasia rushes forwards and stabs the head with one of her knives. It stops screaming for a second, before it reanimates and continues. Stepping back, she fires the four other knives forwards, each one impacting the machine with a resounding "thud" followed by a glow. 

"NOW WE RUN" Mileasia shouts, turning around and sprinting out of the room. Gerdam follows a few paces behind.


	5. End

**_ow ow ow ow ow_ **

**_get off my damn foot you dick_ **

**_i'm trying to write_ **

**_\- Godrick Dealer’s magnum opus, 3rd century poet_ **

Sprinting out of the room, Mileasia grabs Gerdam’s hand and stops. She closes her eyes and puts her hand forwards as if she were praying with one hand. She then opens her eyes and looks forwards and upwards, back to the metal box she was held in not an hour ago.

Her hands flash and her eyes pulsate with a purple energy for a bit, before she throws her hand to the side and draws a circle in the air. The circle materialises in a blackish purple shape, before exploding outwards into the shape of a swirling circle. A portal. They rush inside it. 

They exit the portal and hear a scream, Gerdam jumps to the right and Mileasia jumps to the left. A hammer slams down between them and strikes the floor, bouncing off it and indenting the ground. 

“JIL!” Mileasia shouts. “Please do not strike, it is I, your friend.” 

Jil looks up and opens her eyes. “Sorry” she whispers. “I saw a black thing appear and thought it was that king dude. Is he dead?” 

“Dead ain’t really the right word cause technically you have to ‘die’ t’ be a necro” Gerdam explains. “But we got explodey knives in his machine. We need t-” she cuts herself off. “What happened here?”

Mileasia and Gerdam notice that the room has a few empty suits of dwarven armour, alongside various weapons. About 4 piles in total. 

“Well” Jil starts. “Once you both left I was just in here, trying to rest. But a few guards came up while I was waiting and told me I needed to change to another box. I didn’t really want to, but they came at me anyway. I don’t really think I had a choice… did I?” she asks, voice trailing off. 

“You didn’t lass” Gerdam says. “You defended yeself, it’s admirable” 

Jil still looks down. It turns out she doesn’t like violence very much 

“Jil. Do you know how we leave?” Mileasia asks. “We do not have much time. We halted the process of the reincarnation but we doubt it shall hold him for long”

Jil looks up. “Uh, I might do. I saw a dwarven couple come from the passageway under the keep, in the ‘catacombs’ so to speak. 

Mileasia looks up. “I went down there earlier, there were many tunnels. I may know a way to find the correct one”.

Jil looks at Mileasia. “Can you not cast a portal to get us out?”

Mileasia looks at Jil. “while elven magic is powerful, portals need a line of sight or to be pre-established. Had I known we would be kidnapped I would have placed a marker near the town to transport to. I am sorry, we must find another exit" she utters hurriedly. "We must head to the catacombs".

"Right" Gerdam says. "Hold onto me Jil, we will be sprinting. 

As it turns out, an over 2m tall orc runs considerably faster than a 1.3m tall dwarf, and Gerdam was the one holding onto Jil trying to keep up. They had jumped off the box and Gerdam decimated the ground. They had jumped inside and began sprinting down the closest tunnel. Mileasia leads the way, casting a minor light spell illuminating the way forwards.

"Mileasia" Jil shouts reaching an intersection. "Where next?" 

Mileasia darts her eyes back and forth and shoots a ball of electricity forwards. It stops a few metres ahead of her and slams into the rightwards passage. 

"This way!" Mileasia shouts. "The electricity picks up the colder it gets. This way must be to the exit". 

As they round the corner a group of 4 dwarves awaits them. As it turns out, the king still isn't dead as Gerdam hasn't detonated her magical knives yet. 

Mileasia rushes forwards, striking her palm into the chin of one of the dwarven guards, knocking them into the air and then spinning to face the next one. Gerdam leaps into the air and slams the airborne guard towards the ground with her club, shattering the armour instantly. Mileasia spins and slices the neck of the frontward guard, before jumping backward as the airborne guard flies into the guard with the sliced neck. They both crash into a third guard, obliterating it with the force of the strike. The fourth guard looks up to try and do something, but Mileasia has already launched a knife into his chest. Gerdam rushes by and slams her fist into the knife, shoving the guard back about 3 metres and into the wall. She then turns and holds out her hand, making a motion like she was pressing down on a button. 

The guard explodes from his chest. Gerdam smiles and continues to run, but suddenly, a loud rumbling sound is heard behind them. 

"Gerdam dear" Mileasia asks. "Did you detonate all knives, or just the one inside the chest of the guard?"

Gerdam looks like a child that was just caught eating cat food from the bowl. "Uh, next question" she whimpers.

A thunderous roar is heard behind them, and the tunnel starts to shake. The guards that were behind them evaporate into mist.

"What's happening?!" Jil shouts, suddenly picking up the pace alongside her companions. 

"Necromancers draw energy from life. That is why the king needed servants." Mileasia explains. "When necromancers release the life energy, it reacts violently. We placed explosive knives into the reincarnation machine." Mileasia answers, panting. "If the life energy of thousands of beings is expelled all at once, the resulting shockwave is enough to decimate a titan"

Jil suddenly looks worried. "A titan? You can kill a demigod with that power?" 

Mileasia looks at Jil. "Yes. Or a mountain. A soul is a powerful thing and we are about to experience something we were hoping to see from far away. Please hurry, I doubt we have much time."

The rumbling is getting stronger, as the trio run they notice more blots of ash on the ground with empty sets of armour. Clearly the explosive knives worked, but it was way too early to detonate. Neither Mileasia nor Gerdam know the power of around 350 souls all being released at once.

Braving the earthquake and resulting rockfall, Gerdam works on protecting the trio from falling boulders and blocked pathways while Mileasia stays at the front. Guiding everyone with her electrical powers.

They feel a burning heat behind them, and as they look behind them, they see white fire, which appears to be screaming. None of them had seen such a thing, and when the fire started to scream, they realised that while it was interesting, they did not have the time to marvel. 

They continued to run, sprinting down the empty passageways passing an uncountable amount of wealth in jewels and raw materials. It is no wonder the dwarven king excavated this long, as the amount of raw materials here would probably attract any gem lusting dragon. 

As they ran, Mileasia suddenly grinded to a halt. "What's the matter mate?!" Gerdam yells "keep running!"

"I cannot" Mileasia retorts. "There is a wall here, and I do not know how to get past it. The outside is right behind this wall. They must have some mechanism, find it!"

Gerdam sprints forwards. "Mechanism smechanism. Cover your ears!"

She rushes forwards with her hand glowing an orange light. Screaming, she punches the wall with all her might and blasts the wall open. 

"Oh cock!" Gerdam yells looking down. "This ain't the bottom!" 

Unable to stop herself, Gerdam flies forwards and out the newly formed hole, with Jil following her. They both scream very loudly as they realise they are about 800m in the air without any kind of parachute. 

Mileasia looks down at the two falling heroes and then behind herself. She notices the white flame chasing them and gasps, before leaping forwards herself out the hole and straight down. She plummets forwards, using her slender form and knowledge of aerodynamics to gain speed towards the flailing duo. When she reaches them, she holds Gerdam's leg in one hand and Jil's hand in the other, before blasting powerful blue light into either appendage. All three of them start to slow considerably and Mileasia lets go. 

Gerdam is floating to the ground, her leg suspended in the air, somehow lighter than the rest of her body. Jil is in the same boat, except with her hand. Mileasia of course, is simply looking up. Gerdam notices her gaze and looks up herself. The white flame has exploded from the hole and is now flaming upwards, towards the summit. As they fall they can see the keep being engulfed in the same white flame. 

"Thanks lass" Gerdam finally manages to say. "Why'd ya think the keep's being flamed?"

Mileasia ponders on this. "Memories I assume. Many of the guards were ex workers."

The flames continue to engulf the keep, melting the very core of it. Eroding everything before consuming it forever. 

"Look" Jil mentions, pointing upwards. 

The mountain they came from was also being engulfed in flame. From the summit down to the pathway. The mountain starts to shake for a few moments, before it explodes into white light, strangely, the explosion is completely soundless, with the only sounds being heard are the sound of the wind, and Mileasia's cape.

They slowly continue their descent. Watching the keep crumble and fall, only to be consumed by the white flame. The mountain they were inside is all but gone, with not even an indication to show it existed. The mountain itself now looks like a very large hill, with the other mountains surrounding it suddenly looking very strange and out of place.

"Gerdam" Mileasia starts

"Yes?" Gerdam responds.

"You are safe now." Mileasia turns and looks at Gerdam, upside down and struggling to find her balance in midair. Before she even finishes her sentence, Gerdam is asleep, snoring away peacefully. 

Mileasia smiles and turns to Jil. "Are you okay friend?" 

Jil looks up at Mileasia. "I don't know" she replies. "My friends are dead and my research is gone. I have been a prisoner for about a week and my head is killing me." 

Mileasia glides towards her and gives her a hug. "Without your help" she starts "we would have been, as the humans say, toast". She giggles. "I am sure your friends would be happy to know you saved our lives."

"Yes" Jil says. "But they were the only friends I had. Not many people like orcs you know" 

Mileasia smiles. "I do. I shall be your friend" 

Jil looks up. Seeing Mileasia's smiling face causes a small reaction. She begins to tear up. Whether it be from grief, relief, pain or exhaustion, she passes out also. Mileasia looks at both her floating friends and smiles again. "Thank you friends" she whispers. Before grabbing both of them and guiding them to the closest town.

\--- 

Gerdam wakes up screaming. The woman next to her bed jumps up and screams loudly before running out of the room. Gerdam continues to scream until Mileasia runs in and slaps her across the face. 

"Quiet!" She yells. "There are other patients here too!" 

"Where am I?" Gerdam asks, composing herself. 

A human walks into the room holding a clipboard. "You're in a hospital in dawnmouth" he responds. "Your friend here took you towards the guild and the mage stationed there teleported you to this facility." He looks at Gerdam. "I am surprised you were able to last that long. Your injuries were very severe. Considering all that has happened to you, it's a wonder you were conscious for that long"

"She is well known for her stubbornness doctor" Mileasia says from across the room. "How is she?" 

The doctor coughs. "I would like to keep her for another day to fully remove the necroatrophy that may appear, so please tell her to sit still or I will be forced to restrain her" 

"I'd like to see ya fookin' try'' Gerdam shouts, attempting to exit the bed. "No human can hold me down. 

The human doctor walks forwards and presses a button on the wall. Gerdam all of a sudden realises there are wires in her body and looks at the doctor. 

"Ya sneaky ba-" she starts, before falling over. The doctor and Mileasia grab her and help her back into bed. 

"Will she be okay doc?" Mileasia asks. 

"If she lets me treat her, she will be fine" he replies. "Bloody hell I hate treating dwarves, they bitch and moan and refuse bloody everything…" his voice trails off as he leaves the room. 

"Feekin… humans…" Gerdam says, barely conscious in her bed. 

"I shall protect you from them" Mileasia says, sitting down next to her bed. "Just rest".

A few hours later, Jil walks into the room. After exchanging pleasantries and asking about the status of Gerdam, she sits across the room from Mileasia. 

"How was the interview?" Mileasia asks. 

"It was alright" Jil responds. "Mostly just wanting my account on things. You did a pretty good job explaining what happened. I simply filled in some gaps"

"Yes" Mileasia says. "They also had to duplicate some memories from Gerdam while she was sleeping. I can assure you she will not like that when she finds out."

"What now?" Jil asks, looking at Mileasia. "You're barely in one piece yourself. Why don't you let them treat you?"

"I shall allow them to touch me when Gerdam is recovered. Until then, I will simply use magic to walk. It is no big deal" she retorts, pedantically. "I have sustained worse injuries prior to this event"

Jil looks worried. "If you say so. Listen, I have a holiday home up north. If you would like, we could take one of the orc portals and have a rest at my house. I assure you, it will be very relaxing and recuperating. You may need it after what happened" 

Mileasia looks up. "I think I would like that. I am sure my smelly friend would like that too". 

Jil looks down. "I'm still upset though. I had a lot of research on the stronghold and now it's completely disappeared. Our cabin, our papers, my notebooks. It's all gone. It's such a huge blow to history"

"Jil…" Gerdam grumbles from her bed. "Check… my… back pocket… pants…" 

"Gerdam!" Mileasia starts, but Gerdam shushes her. 

Jil stands up and walks towards the closet. Looking inside she pulls out some battered leather pants. Reaching inside, she fumbles around for a second, before pulling out a pink notebook

"Is this…" Jil asks, tears in her eyes.

"I picked it up… with my weapons…" Gerdam coughs. "It seemed… important" 

"Thank you so much Gerdam. I will never forget this" Jil says. Tears spilling from her eyes as she reads over her research. 

"You fucking better not". Gerdam says snarkily, before passing out again.

Mileasia looks at Gerdam sleeping. Then at Jil crying over her notes. She sighs and looks up at the ceiling before closing her eyes.

"Gerdy is finally safe" she thinks. "The world is at peace for now". 


End file.
